As long as we're alive
by JuliettaVendetta
Summary: When she, by chance, meets Steve and Natasha, she is drawn into a new world full of secret espionage agencies, secrets and international terrorism. But has this world always been strange to her?
1. August 27

**1\. August 27**

An explosion.

It must have been an explosion, so loud and strong that it made the very ground rumble and a piercing whistle in the ears, drowning out everything else.

Chaos, everywhere. Screams, but barely audible, as if the TV's loudspeakers weren't working properly. Glass on the floor and the smell of fire and smoke.

Dizzied, she stood up, looking around, until someone grabbed her arm and dragged her away from where she was standing, out of the building. She heard muffled voices, but no distinguished sounds.

She was sat down about ten yards from the building on the ground. She could hardly see due to the smoke in the building, let alone hear. Only the ringing sound and muffled white noise.

What had happened? The person who had got her out was already gone.

Her eyes stopped to water after just a few minutes, and she got up gingerly. Many more people were sitting around the square, some were sitting in groups, others alone, and smoke was coming out of the building she had been in such a short while ago.

What had happened?

She was still watching the building's entrance when she heard the first sirens. Two largely built men were carrying another person out of the doors, but from what she saw, it seemed that it might be too late already for the sirens.

"Are you okay?"

She hadn't realized that the ringing noise had died away. A middle aged man was looking her up and down, looking worried. He had soot smeared over his face.

"Okay", was all she said, nodding slightly. "Thanks", she added, after a few seconds.

The man gave her a wry smile, patted her once on the shoulder and went to look after an elderly lady, looking lost with a singed handbag dangling from her bloodied arm.

The first ambulance arrived at the scene, paramedics jumping out of it while people were storming towards it like moths to the light.

She stood up, but stayed where she was, when suddenly another explosion made the earth tremble and her stumble again. People were running everywhere, screaming in panic. She stayed put, not knowing where to go. Where had the explosion come from? She could see neither fire nor smoke, and the square was nearly empty.

And there they were. Suddenly they appeared everywhere, seemingly out of nowhere, masked and heavily armed. Then she saw the others, a tall man wearing a round shield and a woman dressed all in black first, then people who looked like a SWAT team from a TV show. The first group opened fire instantly, but she saw the woman take on three men at once, proving to be an equal match for all of them.

"Come on!" Somebody had grabbed her elbow, dragging her with them. "It's too dangerous here, got going!"

She started to move reluctantly, still not sure where it was more dangerous, since the masked man had appeared from everywhere. The person dragging her was already gone.

After a few steps, she turned around once again, cursing herself for doing so. She felt the gaze of the tall man with the shield, fighting two gunmen at once, linger on her for the fraction of a second, when she saw another masked attacker behind him, aiming for his head.

"Behind you!", she screamed without thinking.

She saw him turn around and throw his shield at the masked man, knocking him out instantly.

She heard them scream words in a language that felt vaguely familiar. She heard more shots. She was knocked down by the pain. Everything was quiet, and all she could hear was her own breathing, fast and shallow, panicked. She couldn't locate the pain and heat and cold rushed over her.

"… still alive, get us a heli," she heard someone say. A woman, by the sound of the voice. She felt pressure on her stomach and a tough hand on her shoulder, along with excruciating pain. "Stay with me, okay?", the woman said.

She wanted to scream, but her lungs wouldn't fill with enough air.


	2. August 31

**2\. August 31**

Flickering lights, so loud. And voices. Strange sounds, flickering lights, alien voices.

Now, she heard nothing but a steady, electric beeping. No voices, no flickering lights.

How long had she been gone?

Slowly, so very slowly, she opened her eyes. A dim light greeted her, like an artificial winter's sun. The throbbing pain in her head caused little stars to appear before her eyes. She wanted to sleep… just sleep.

"Stay with me, okay?" A woman came into her sight, with dark hair and a small frame. She tried to focus her gaze on the woman, but the hammer in her head was doing a proper job.

"What happened?", she managed to say. Her lips felt dry and chapped.

The woman came closer.

"You've been shot, three days ago. You'll survive, no worries there", she said quietly. "I'll get a doctor now, yeah? Try to stay awake, okay?"

She tried to nod, but darkness was creeping back over her. A few moments later, someone came back in the room.

A hand stroke her cheek, softly. "Just a few more minutes, Miss", a tall and slender man said. She opened her eyes again. The man wore a white lab coat and a stethoscope around his neck. He flashed a small torch light in her eyes and prodded the fingers of her left hand. She couldn't tell whether he was satisfied with the results he got. "How do you feel?", he asked her.

She tried to give a sarcastic laugh, but it wouldn't come out. "Two out of ten", she said, slowly.

"Glad you didn't lose your sense of humour, then", the doctor said with a smile on his ever blurrier face. "Are you in pain?"

Closing her eyes, she nodded.

"I'll give you something to stop the pain", she heard him say. And more mumbling and undistinguished voices as she drifted back to sleep.

When she woke up the next time, the hammering in her head was gone. She opened her eyes to what seemed like the broad light of day.

"There you are" A woman's voice, deep, yet friendly. She turned her head and saw the woman from the square sitting by her bed. She was wearing a grey leather jacket over a white shirt, her red hair in a ponytail.

Her breath caught for a moment. "Where am I? What happened?", she asked.

"You were shot. Twice, in the shoulder and the abdomen. You lost a lot of blood, but you pulled through… that was three days ago"

She said nothing. Three days… she'd been gone for three whole days, and it seemed that she was lucky, having lost only three days.

"We got you out of there ASAP. Doctors say it was a close call, but I don't think that matters now…" The woman gave her a small smile. "Steve'll be glad when I tell him you finally woke up. He's been here until yesterday evening, but I sent him home and took over, since we couldn't find any family of yours."

"I don't have a family", she said.

"I'm sorry to hear that", the woman answered. "Anyway, I'm not here to remind you of that…" She made an ominous pause. "What do you know about the attack three days ago?"

"Pardon?", she asked, taken off guard. She tried to sit up, but a striking pain in her stomach kept her from doing so.

"Stay down", the woman said. "We're not saying it's your fault. But fact is, they seemed to know you, and they vanished after you were shot. Fact is also that they shot and killed three civilians before they shot you. And finally, they seemed to recognize you, calling the name _Tamila_ before they disappeared. So you will allow me the question"

"My name is Josephine, not Tamila"

The woman cocked her head to the left side. "Now", she said. "That's interesting".


	3. September 7

**3\. September 7**

„Are you sure?"

„She said they wanted to talk to me ASAP, of course I'm sure"

"You're still hospitalized"

"Like I care", Jo said loudly. She looked Steve, standing in front of her, up and down. Well, mostly up, since he was about a foot taller than she was. They were standing in the hospital's foyer, and people were already looking.

"Look, it's barely been a week", he tried to reason with her.

"Yeah, and you don't want to give me the chance to finally find out what's going on exactly?"

"You know that this is not true" He looked hurt, or was she imagining it?

"I'm sorry", she said quietly. "But I am going. The question is just whether I need to go alone or you'll get me there"

He sighed. "Really", he said. "I'd much rather you'd stay here and wait 'til you get the okay"

"You know better than I do that this is so not going to happen. Besides, I'll be back afterwards, so what?"

He rolled his eyes. "Get going", he said, nodding his head towards the door.

She stopped a few steps out of the hospital's entrance. "Where do I need to go?", she asked.

"Well, what would you do if you weren't with me?"

"I don't know", she retorted, exasperatedly. "Get a cab to drive me there, I guess".

"Fancy a walk? It's not even a mile away…"

Ten days ago, she had been shot, and had barely survived. She had been unconscious for three full days, and had met Steve the day after she had woken up.

He turned out to be the tall man with the shield, fighting the masked gunmen in the square. He said she might have saved his life, and that he owed her.

He also said that he knew what it was like waking up and having no one to talk to, but he would not say how he knew this, claiming it was _classified information, sorry about that_. He had visited her every day after that.

He had been rather stiff, acting somewhat odd at times, especially the first day. As if he was not used to talking to a woman, or people in general, if it came to that. He seemed somewhat old-fashioned, in lack of a better word.

"You're quiet, Josephine", he said after they had left the hospital grounds.

"I told you to call me Jo", she said, and when he merely grinned she told him how nervous she was.

"I know", was all he said.

"Yeah, sure…", she answered sarcastically.

"Now that's much better," he grinned.

It was hardly more than half a mile to go. Before she realized it, they were standing in front of a huge, circular, glass and concrete building-complex. Steve led her through a glazed double door, opening automatically, into the main building. Inside, they were met by bustling activity. People in suits and business outfits were walking and running around everywhere. It looked like every other office building she had ever been to, and having majored in IT, she'd been to a lot of them.

"This way", Steve said. "Make sure you stay with me"

He led her through another set of double doors and then to a wall with a line of elevators. Every now and then, he would greet somebody, friendly but somewhat distanced. An elevator opened its doors just as they stopped before it, half a dozen people streaming out, with some of them looking her curiously up and down. They got into the elevator, the door closing right after they entered it, with no one else joining them.

"Fury", Steve said to no one in particular.

"Request approved" A female computer voice sounded in the elevator.

"I didn't realize it would be this easy, getting in here…", she mused.

"It's only easy because you're with me", he answered. "They wouldn't have let you through the main gates on your own. Seen how they all sized you up?"

"Yeah… I was wondering about that", she said. "But still… no retina-scans, or at least some secret codes, or ID-card swipe things? Nothing?"

"It's voice detection, mostly. That and biometric identification. As long as you're with an agent of a higher level, you'll get through, but as soon as you're alone you won't even get to the cafeteria. The doors simply won't open", he replied. "You're still okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're pale"

She looked at her blurry reflection, with her left arm in a sling, in the glass wall of the elevator. "I'm fine", she said.

Steve said nothing in return, but continued to watch her worriedly whenever he thought she wasn't paying attention, but of course she was.

The elevator stopped in the 36th floor, but the doors wouldn't open.

"Now's the time for retina-scans", he said jokingly. He pressed his hand on a display next to the elevator doors, which she hadn't noticed before. "Okay", he added, "It's not a retina-scan, but at least they want fingerprints". The display lightened up and went dark again. The doors opened after a few more moments, and they entered an empty floor, door after door on one side of the wall, all of which he ignored, heading straight down the hallway. He didn't pause to knock on the door at the end of the floor, but he just walked in, holding the door open for her to enter the room behind it.

It was a small office without windows, only one desk in it, and behind that desk sat a woman in her early forties, with short blonde hair and glasses, looking up from her paperwork and nodding a greeting.

"Morning, Cap", she said. "The boss is waiting for you"

"Thanks, Fiona", he replied, and beckoned Jo to follow him.

They went through another door. The office behind those doors was one of the biggest she had ever seen, the outside wall made of glass and a huge desk before it. Behind the desk sat a black man, probably in his early fifties, bald, with a patch over his left eye. She could see the scarred skin around the eye patch. The man was dressed all in black. He didn't stand up when they entered the room.

Steve stopped about halfway before the desk, standing somewhat in front of her. "Close the door, would you, Natasha?" he said. She turned around and stifled a cry when she found the red haired woman standing by the door, closing it.

"Always at your service, Cap", the woman said with an ironic grin.

Now the man behind the desk stood up. "Rogers", he said, nodding. "And this is our special guest?"

"You know who she is, Fury", Steve retorted.

He seemed different now. Not distant or odd, but confident and in charge.

"True", Fury admitted. "Why don't you sit down?" He beckoned to the chairs in front of his desk.

Steve nodded, and they sat down. Sitting down was a relief she would never admit. The pain in her stomach had been growing ever worse since they had entered the building, and her knees started to get all wobbly.

"Miss Josephine Marlow, you said?" Fury looked at her for the first time.

"Wait", she answered. "I didn't _say_ that. It's my name. I was born with that name"

"Well, I am sorry to tell you, Miss Marlow, but that might not be the truth"

She sat motionless, taken aback, staring at Fury. "You're lying", she said finally.

"We ran your name through our software, but to no avail", he went on, completely ignoring her. "It was only when we matched your photograph with the name _Tamila_ that we got a result. A disturbing one, I might add" He paused.

"Do you want me to beg for answers?"

He just raised his eyebrows at her.

"I asked whether you want me to beg for answers or if you are going to tell me what you found", she said, more forcefully this time, looking him directly in the face.

His face split into a crooked grin. "I like your attitude, Miss", he said. "So what we got was a terrorist cell. They were based somewhere in the Soviet Union, before the 1990's. We assumed it to have vanished after that, its members either dead or having fled to other countries. They were infamous for abducting children at a young age, training them to be high profile spies and assassins. After the USSR broke apart, some files were found on abducted children and their possible whereabouts. Most of these children were found, executed, in a mass grave in what is today known as Chechnya, but some vanished without a trace, probably dead as well"

Natasha, now standing next to Steve, caught her breath. Fury looked at her and shook his head, hardly noticeable. She relaxed a little, and Jo focused back on Fury.

"You're lying", she said. When nobody said anything, she went on. "You're telling me I was born somewhere in the USSR, being abducted when I was a little girl, trained and then what? That is ridiculous, and you know that. I was born and raised in Wisconsin. I have certificates to proof it. I remember growing up in Green Bay. I went to Kindergarten there, I _remember_ it"

"I'm sorry, but maybe you don't. These memories could be fake. There was a girl named Tamila among the abducted children, and she was not in one of the mass graves. She has never been found. Using age-progression software on that photograph, some significant points match your pictures. As there are no DNA samples of Tamila, so we have to rely on the photograph and the indication we've got"

"But what use would I be? Not remembering anything at all, what with the fake memories?", she sad hotly.

"What about your parents?", he wanted to know, instead of answering her question.

"They died five years ago", she said reluctantly.

"You were, how old, eighteen?", he asked.

She said nothing. How could he know?

"So, are you saying what I think you're saying?" Steve sat in his chair, bolt upright, looking alert.

"We both know what he's saying, Steve" Natasha's gaze rested on Fury's face. "And if we're right, she might be the perfect sleeper"


	4. September 21

**4\. September 21**

She had been released from the hospital two weeks after visiting S.H.I.E.L.D. and being told about her past.

A young agent had taken her to her flat, only to find the door pried open and her small apartment in a chaos. She had to wait by the door, terrified, while Agent Wright searched the two rooms for intruders.

"This is quite a rough area, you know," she said meekly when he came back. "It might not have anything to do with… well…"

Agent Wright shook his head. "We'll relocate you," he said. "I'm sorry, but you might not be safe here anymore. You should get inside and start packing" This being said, he took out his cell phone and started dialing.

The rooms had been torn apart, thoroughly so. All the drawers had been torn out, her clothes lay on the floor, the mattress of her bed thrown to the floor and ripped apart. Her pulse running, she pulled her suitcase from the wardrobe and started to sort through her clothes, throwing the pieces that looked whole into it. Then she rummaged through her documents, putting everything important into the suitcase as well. She had just started looking for her laptop when Wright entered the room.

"I'm almost done," she said. "I mean… there really isn't much left, you know…"

"I'm sorry," he said sympathetically. "But I got you a new flat. We can go as soon as you're ready"

"A new flat? How did you manage that?" she asked, completely surprised. It had taken her weeks to find an affordable apartment, even in this area of D.C.

"It pays, working for the government," he grinned.

"I think they got my computer", she said.

"Anything important on it?"

"Not really, it was quite new," she answered, striding through the room to the darts board on the far wall. She took it of, turned it around and reprised a flat metal object. "Looks like they didn't find the external hard drive", she said, smiling this time.

"We should go", he said. "You want me to take your suitcase?"

The car stopped in front of an old building in a small side street.

"There's no elevator, that's a minus," Wright began, heaving her suitcase out of the trunk. "But it's in a better neighborhood, closer to S.H.I.E.L.D. and we can keep a better eye on you"

"I'm sorry, but I can never afford this", she said quietly and stopped in front of the building.

"Don't worry," he replied. "The rent's gonna be taken off your salary"

"Begging your pardon? Salary? What do you mean, salary?"

"Come in," he said and opened the entrance door. "What I mean with salary? Your salary from S.H.I.E.L.D., of course"

"But I'm of no use," she said bitterly.

"Of course you are. Or will be. This way, follow me"

They climbed three sets of stairs and then went down a narrow hallway, tinted in the brownish shade of green she associated with the late 1950's. The linoleum floor was a weird shade of yellowish grey, but otherwise it looked very clean. He stopped after passing two doors and put her suitcase down, then fumbled in his pockets.

"The apartment is empty at the moment, which means that every agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. can enter it with their ID card and a code. You will be picked up tomorrow morning and brought to the HQ, get your own ID and have the apartment written on your name. That means that no card but yours opens the doors from the outside." He pulled out his card and swiped it through the reader on the wall next to the door, then entered a code. She heard a soft clicking noise, and he opened the door. "After you," he said in a friendly manner.

She found herself in a living room about the size of her old apartment. At the far wall was a modern-looking kitchenette, along with a table and four chairs around it. There was also a small sofa with a matching table, and even a small TV set.

"Bigger and better than the old one, I hope?" Wright grinned.

"Much better" She shook her head in disbelief.

"The bedroom is over there" Wright said, pointing to the left, where a small hallway led the way to a doorframe without a door in it. She could see part of a bed through it. "Bathroom is right next to it. Of course you can buy new furniture whenever you want," he added. "Just tell someone from headquarters before you throw the bed away, you know?" He made for the door.

"I don't know what to say", she said. "Except for, well, thank you…"

"You'll be fine", he replied. "But before I forget, here" He handed her an ID card. "It's only valid for a day", he explained. "The code is 69646358, it's written down here…" He gave her a piece of paper with said code written on it. "Well now, I gotta go to work. Enjoy the rest of your day, ahm…"

"Jo", she said.

He smiled and opened the door. "Bye, Jo," he said.

"Bye," she said and watched him walk down the hallway, keeping a foot in the open door. A figure passed him as he went down the stairs. They seemed to exchange a greeting, and the figure drew nearer.

"Josephine?" It was Steve. He was wearing sports gear, his dark blonde hair a sweaty mess. "What are you doing here?"

"Looks like I just moved in", she said.

"I thought you had an apartment?" he raised his eyebrows at her.

"Note the past tense," she said. "When we arrived there today the door was pried open and the rooms were taken apart, so Agent Wright decided to… wait, what did he call it?, ah yeah, to _relocate_ me. And well, here I am…"

He smiled wryly. "I'd say it's nice to have you here, but given the circumstances…"

She tried to smile back, but had the impression that it was a rather crooked smile. Nobody said a word for what felt to her like much too long a time. "Well, I should start to… well, get my stuff sorted. Unpack, you know?" she stuttered.

"Yeah, right, I… I should really take a shower, I'd say. Before I get really smelly and… yeah"

"So, I… I'll see you, okay?"

"Yeah, sure, okay. Ahm. Yeah"

He turned around and made for his door. She started closing the door to her new flat. Her new, very alien, very empty, very silent flat. She opened the door again, glad to see him still fumbling around with his ID card.

"Ahm, Steve? I mean, I know I'm being really brash now, but… I can't be alone tonight… And I excel in ordering pizza"

He smiled. "Is seven all right?"


	5. November 20

**5\. November 20**

Three months ago, her life had changed dramatically. Dramatically… what a word.

Being shot could be enough to be thrown off track for almost any normal person. Being told that your whole life was a lie afterwards was like being slapped in the face. A million times. Squared.

The past weeks had been a constant strain. She would get up early and go to headquarters, where people would try to make her remember.

It meant constant training in hand-to-hand combat, on different sorts of weapons and whatnot. It meant people interrogating her, sometimes in a language she didn't understand, for hours at a time, about things she had no idea of. It meant coming home late at night, hardly any sleep and the same procedure starting the next day, every day.

She had almost given up when two weeks ago during combat training, she disarmed six men in a matter of just a few seconds. She had not realized what she had been doing when suddenly all of them were lying on the ground, clutching their arms, legs, or stomachs respectively, groaning in pain. Fury had been watching her from a distance, nodding approvingly when she looked at him before he disappeared again.

After that, there were no interrogations anymore, and just the physical training remained.

She had not seen Steve, or anyone else, for weeks now. Only Fury, and just this once.

Most people avoided her. They would stare at her until she looked back, maybe sometimes reply a greeting, or otherwise ignore her altogether. So she was surprised when one day, when she was sitting in a secluded room all on her own, reading a book, she heard a chair drawn and realized someone was sitting opposite her. She looked up to find herself staring at Natasha, who was watching her expectantly, eyebrows raised an all.

"Settled in all right?", she asked.

"More or less", Jo said evasively.

"I heard you pulled quite the berserker two weeks ago" Natasha couldn't suppress a grin.

"That's not funny. Why haven't I seen you in weeks?"

"It is funny. And I was away"

"So we're talking secret missions?"

Natasha chuckled. "Maybe we are"

"Natasha? I was looking for- oh, Josephine"

It was Steve. He was standing in the doorway, looking lost for words.

"There you are, what a surprise" Natasha didn't seem surprised at all. "Checked in with Fury? Come in, sit down, have a chat"

"In the morning, yeah. Why do you want to know?", he said, entering the room and sitting down next to Natasha.

"I thought I'd see you there last night, and seeing as you weren't there, I thought I'd ask. Did you see him yesterday?" Natasha looked from Steve to Jo.

"I haven't seen anyone of you in weeks…" Jo answered.

"Yeah, I was sort of not available", Steve said.

"Did you finally ask Christina on a date?"

"No, I was too busy", he said, rolling his eyes.

"Oh really?, Natasha said teasingly. "So tell me, what's the Captain doing when he's busy?"

"Not telling you, for example"

Natasha made a face. "You seen Clint?"

"Standing right behind you"

Jo looked up to see an unfamiliar man leaning casually in the doorframe. He had short, light brown hair and a genuine smile etched on his otherwise serious face.

Natasha's face lightened up the moment she saw him. "Fury wanted to talk to you," she said.

"Just been there," he answered and came into the room, sitting down next to Jo, opposite Natasha and Steve. When he passed her, he lightly touched Natasha's shoulder. "So you're the new one," the man Natasha had called Clint looked at her curiously. "Potential sleeper, hah? Really don't look the part. Oh my, it never gets boring here, really"

Jo raised an eyebrow at him. "You're weird," she said matter-of-factly.

Clint's face broke into a big grin. "Just a joke," he answered. "But still, it's an interesting story you've got there"

"I'm not sure I get your definition of _interesting_ ," Jo said slowly.

"Anyway, Josephine, I'm Clint," he said in a friendly manner, utterly ignoring her remark.

"How do you know my name, Clint?"

"Read your file. It's a good read, actually"

"I thought it was restricted?" Steve said, looking at Clint in bewilderment.

"My clearance level is above the restriction level," he said dismissively.

"Anything new in it?" Jo asked. "Last time I looked it said that my real memories start at the age of about fifteen"

"I repeat – I thought it was restricted?" Now Steve was looking at her, the same looked on his face.

Jo shrugged. "I hacked into my file from my laptop. At home," she said. "Since it's about me I figured I had a right to know about it. Don't worry, I went to the IT department the next day and told them about the loophole"

"But you just said the _last_ time"

"They guys at IT know me quite well by now" Jo could just so suppress a laugh when she saw the smirk on Natasha's face.

"I need to go," Jo said suddenly when she looked at the clock over the door. "My next training session starts in five minutes, and I still get lost all the time I look for the room"

"Have fun," Steve said.

"Haha," she made sarcastically. "I don't see the fun in hitting people in the face. I don't even like touching them"

"You get used to it," Clint said. It wasn't helping.

She said nothing for a while. "I don't know", she sighed, finally. "I'm not cut out for this…"

"That's because you don't remember", Natasha said sympathetically.

"But I do remember! I just remember a different past"

"I never heard about artificial memories before", Steve mused. It didn't help.

"I did, but none of them were this good", Clint told him. It didn't help, either.

"That's not very helpful", she said.

"It gets better" Natasha smiled at her. It might have been genuine.


	6. February 12

**6\. February 12**

„Fury," Natasha said when they entered the elevator.

Jo didn't even hear the computer voice giving the familiar answer. She looked out of the elevator over the panorama D.C. was giving her today, a rainy, dark version of itself. Her pulse was running, she could feel the blood thumping in her neck and a disturbing white noise in her ears.

Hill had called twenty minutes ago with a message from Fury. An urgent message which told her to come as soon as she could.

When she had stormed out of her flat, just so remembering to take her ID-card, she had run into Steve in the hallway. He had seemed alert, not his casual, shy self. He had measured her up with a single gaze and she had been wondering whether he had gotten the same call, which he had indeed. He was wearing his shield on his back and she wondered if this was a precaution or serious trouble.

They had run down the stairs and just as they left the building, a black Corvette screeched to a halt in front of them. Natasha always had a sense for a dramatic entrance. The window was lowered **.** "Get in, sweethearts," Natasha said in a mocking voice.

Steve couldn't suppress a grin when they entered the car, Jo on the backseat and Steve next to Natasha on the front seat. "And again, you forgot to bring coffee", he said with a grin that didn't quite make it to his eyes.

"It's not like me to pay for coffee," Natasha replied with a smirk and set the car in motion again.

Steve and Natasha engaged in quiet conversation, with Jo looking out of the rear window, the streets blurry in the rain and the speed. What was it that made it this important for her to come to Fury? Nothing much had happened in the past few months, so what was this important now that he had to see her, along with Steve and Natasha?

They arrived at the Triskelion before Jo had come to a satisfactory answer that didn't involve alien invasions taking over S.H.I.E.L.D. and holding Fury captive.

"What does he want? Any ideas?" Steve was looking from her to Natasha. Whenever he expected trouble, he only spoke in short, staccato-like sentences.

She shook her head, startled, and shrugged.

"No idea," Natasha said.

The elevator came to a halt and the display appeared next to the doors, asking for fingerprints. Natasha put her right hand on it and let it scan her hand before it disappeared again and the doors opened.

Jo had to restrain herself from running down the hallway to Fury's office, and so she walked there along with Steve and Natasha at a brisk pace. Steve was already through the door to Fury's office, with Natasha at his heels, turning around at the door and beckoning her to hurry.

The room was brightly lit, the windows darkened, and Fury and Hill were standing behind the enormous desk, staring silently at a monitor. It was weird. She had been at S.H.I.E.L.D. for several months now, and had never seen Fury staring at a monitor. He always used holographic projections in the middle of the room, reacting on the flick of his hand.

He and Hill looked up when Jo closed the door behind after entering the room.

"We've got news," Fury said instead of a greeting. Steve and Natasha were standing in front of the desk by now while Jo was still standing by the door.

"News?" She asked loudly before she could stop herself. She saw Hill smirk behind Fury's back, which stopped her from wishing for a hole to disappear in.

"Why don't you come closer, Agent Marlow?" Fury said instead of giving an answer. He had never referred to her as an agent before, even though she officially was one. Jo bit her lip and went to the desk, coming to a halt standing next to Natasha.

"What news?" She repeated calmly.

Fury made a flicking gesture with his right hand over his desk and a holograph appeared in the middle of the room, almost as high as the office itself, giving away a faint bluish glow. The holograph showed a rough landscape, a rocky area surrounded by conifers laden heavily with snow. A map on the upper right corner located the picture in a remote area of Nunavut, Canada.

"We found them today," Fury said while Jo was still staring at the map in the middle of the room.

Hill came around the desk and stopped before the holograph. "If you look at this," she said and indicated the rocky ground in the middle of the picture, zooming it in, "you'll find the rock formation looks out of place. We found this place in a routine satellite check of remote areas, searching for odd and unnatural occurrences. The image flickered and suddenly about a dozen people were in the picture, dressed in thick jackets and armed with assault rifles. Where had they come from? "The image is live from our espionage satellite, updating every thirty seconds," Hill explained, catching her confusion. "We sent a team up there a few hours ago. They got as far as the point we are looking at right now, giving us indication that there was something going on underground. That was the point when contact broke off. Screams, gunfire, then nothing"

Jo swallowed hard. This didn't sound good at all. She looked around at Steve and Natasha, who looked quite serious as well.

"Why are we here then?" Steve asked finally.

"Because half an hour ago, another message was transmitted," Fury said.

"It was Russian and consisted of only one sentence. _Give us the girl or they die_. Nothing else," Hill explained.

It was like a sucker punch. So that's why she was here?

"Of course we're not going to surrender you," Fury said before anyone else could think about saying something. "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Rogers, Romanoff, I want you to get ready, you're leaving in half an hour. The IT division is still trying to get a way into their database and should be done by the time you take off. You know what I want you to do"

Steve and Natasha merely nodded when the phone on Fury's desk started to ring. "Yes?" He said upon taking it. And then, after a short pause, "Send it over" He put the phone down again. "They're in," he said. "And they cannot make sense of it"

The holograph flickered for a second, then row upon row of letters appeared on the screen. They all stared at in silence.

Steve shook his head, his eyes wide open, having given up immediately.

"That's nonsense," Hill said a few seconds later. "Are they sure it's real?"

"They are," Fury said, not sounding too convinced.

"Gibberish," was all Natasha had to say about it.

Fury nodded and made to wipe the lines from the screen.

"Wait!" Jo said, astounded by herself.

"What?" Fury asked.

"This is… my god, this is just too weird," she said. "I can't believe they would do this. This is a mixture of… oh seriously" Jo couldn't help herself and chuckled. "This is a weird mixture of Klingon, Sindarin, Quenya, and something else"

"You lost me there," Natasha said.

"It's fictional languages. Lord of the Rings and Star Trek and I don't know what"

Fury was staring at her incredulously. "How do you know that?"

"How do you have an enormous organization at your hand and have no one who has ever heard of it?" Jo replied.

"We're dealing with the real world, Marlow. There's no place for fiction"

"Well, here's your real world, correlating with fiction quite all right," she snapped.

"Can you read it?" Hill asked.

"Most of it," She stepped closer to the holograph. "I'm good wit languages, and I had a lot of spare time in my first year of college," she added with a look at both Steve and Natasha. "It's written in some form of a code. I can give you the English words, but I'm not sure I can make sense of it after all," she said. "It's quite confused. I can't make much of it right now, but this one here" She indicated a line in the lower half of the document. "This one tells us how they open the doors. It's voice detection, like here, but they have code words, as it seems. Every door has another one. No, sorry, not every door, every floor has got another codeword" She scanned the lines again. "They're all here…"

Fury and Hill exchanged glances, as did Steve and Natasha. Jo swallowed once more.

"Get ready, Marlow" Fury's gaze rested on her. She nodded, suppressing both a hysterical laugh and a terrified scream.

"That's ridiculous, Fury" Steve said loudly, taking a step to his left so that now he was standing right between Jo and Fury.

"It's the best chance all of us have got," Hill said soothingly, but she didn't look too convinced herself.

"What if it's a trap?" It was the first time in all those months that Jo had seen Natasha look worried.

Fury looked from her, to Jo, to Hill, to Steve and back. "Oh," he said. "I'm sure it is."


	7. February 12 (2)

**7\. February 12**

It was freezing cold. The wind was blowing mercilessly when the glider got down in a dark conifer forest.

"It's about a mile to go," Steve said to no one in particular when they got out of the small glider. They had landed in the middle of the forest so as not to alert the group of terrorists on their arrival and to not give them the chance to kill potential survivors.

They set to move. Snow was blowing into her face and the wind blew through her thick jacket and the Kevlar vest she wore underneath it.

One of the members of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team, Rumlow, led the way, looking on his GPS device every few seconds, checking they were still on track. It was a weird procession they formed, all clad in black combat gear and black jackets, making their way through the cold, dark forest.

Steve lowered his pace until he was walking next to her.

"You're shaking," he said.

"Hello, Captain Obvious," she remarked sarcastically. "It's freezing, in case you hadn't noticed"

He smirked, but became serious again after a second. "Recap," he said.

"Go in, get to the CC, stay there with Salinger and get control over the complex. Wait there until you give the all clear. Get out ASAP," she recounted.

"Good one," Steve said. He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace than anything else. He didn't like her being here. He had said so himself back in Fury's office and again when they boarded the carrier an hour ago. She didn't even take it as an insult, no. She'd much rather be in Washington right now, but Fury was right – if their code really was written in this weird mixture of fictional languages, and S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't have an experienced agent at hand who spoke them, it was the only possibility to get the prisoners out of there alive.

They marched on in silence. Even Natasha wasn't in a talkative mood and didn't try to set Steve on a date, like she normally would. After a few minutes, Rumlow stopped abruptly, spreading out his right arm in warning. "We'll set the decoy here," he said. This meant that they were close to their goal. They had agreed on setting a decoy in close proximity, hoping to get a first response team out of the bunker and being able to enter the complex itself more quietly.

The decoy was set and they wandered off in a different direction, with Jo only realizing now that they hadn't taken the shortest way before.

They walked on, and when they were called to another halt, she could see the outline of the rock formation from the holograph in Fury's office from where they were standing. A few moments later, she could hear an explosion, shouts and screams from where they had been standing before. So that's what a decoy does, she thought to herself. She was still shaking, and now it wasn't only the cold. Things had gotten real now.

It was only a few moments later that people, masked, dressed in dark gear, heavily armed, appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Jo held her breath. What if they were found?

One of the men took out a strange device, stopped where he was standing and stared at it for several moments. Jo could feel the blood pumping in her veins, feel the blood rushing in her ears. What if they were found? But the man put the device back in one of his many pockets and stormed after the others.

Jo breathed again.

"It's the jackets," Natasha explained quietly, even though she hadn't asked. "They make you pretty much untraceable. Even warmth-cameras cannot find you if you're wearing one of those"

Steve was watching as the men disappeared in the forest, then looked at his watch. After about a minute, he stared at the place where the men had appeared. "Let's go," was all he said.

It was quiet in the bunker, much too quiet for her liking. They had separated shortly after entering it, with Steve, Natasha and the others going further down, looking for the hostages, and Jo and Agent Salinger making their way to the CC.

They stopped in front of a heavy steel door, Salinger beckoning her to be quiet. How he could be so sure that this was the door they needed to tear down she didn't know.

Jo knew what was going to come, but still, when Salinger kicked the door open and shot the three men standing in there immediately, it came as a shock. She moved back to the wall, her eyes wide open, her pulse running, breathing heavily. Salinger secured the room and then came over to her, taking her into the room, leading her away from the bodies and placing her in front of a wall of monitors. All of them were blank.

"Remember this," he said. "It's either them or you. And they won't be sorry. Ever"

She nodded, shrugging off her thick jacket, trying to calm herself, at least a little.

"Ready?" Salinger asked.

Jo nodded slowly and put the earpiece out of her pocket and on her ear. She looked at the keyboard and its strange signs. "They're Klingon…" she said astonished. Salinger looked at her, one eyebrow raised, and went back to the door to close it. "I mean, it's just kinda cheap…" Jo added quietly and started to type various orders on the keyboard. Green writing appeared on the screen, in Latin letters, but the words were still mostly fictional. She continued to type in orders.

"Hey, I know that one," Salinger said, standing next to her again. "It's circle"

"Almost," Jo replied absentmindedly. "It's circuit... Okay" She looked up. "We're getting there. I hacked the cameras and turned off voice detection," she told Salinger as the green letters vanished from the screen and black and white videos appeared. "Cap, you hear me?" She held the communication tool on her right wrist to her mouth, feeling weird by doing so. "Where are you?"

"Third floor down" She heard Steve's voice as if he was standing next to her.

"They're in the fourth, down the hallway, heavily guarded by at least twenty men. I'll lock the levels downwards. You better be quick, they'll kill them if they hear you coming"

"Give us two minutes, then turn off the lights and unlock the doors"

"Copied"

It was the longest two minutes in her life. She counted every second of them until finally Salinger nodded and she typed in new orders.

"Get going," she said in her communicator. She didn't get a reply. Salinger gave her a USB-Stick, sporting S.H.I.E.L.D.'s emblem. Fury had given her the task of extracting data to get information on the organization of which they didn't even know the name yet. She put the stick into the port, typed in a few orders and watched how the download started.

The door burst open, and before she realized it, two men came in, Salinger jumped up, stood in front of her, shot the first man. When he aimed for the other man, this one fired a single shot, hitting Salinger square in the chest. He fell down immediately, a crumpled heap of human on the floor.

"Look who's there," the man said in a strange accent, drawing closer. Jo backed away, breathing fast; with every step the man took she took one backwards until she hit the far wall. He didn't stop and went on until he was standing right in front of her, only inches away. "Look who's there," he said again, his breath smelling of cigarettes.

Her breathing became ever faster, until he held up his gun and put it on her chest. Suddenly she relaxed, took a deep breath, and before she knew what she was doing, she shoved the gun away, punched her elbow in his stomach, ducked out of his reach, grabbed his wrist with her left hand and turned it on his back, twisting it hard until he yelped in pain and let go of the gun. She kicked him hard in the back of his knees and then against his head. He sacked away. It had happened in the matter of a second. She kicked the gun away to the far end of the room and rushed to Salinger, turning him on his back. His dark coat glinted from the blood flowing from the wound in his chest.

"No," she breathed. "No, no, no, no, no, don't do this to me, no…" She placed her left hand on his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there, faint, but there. She opened his coat, trying to locate the wound, and put her hands on it to stop the blood flow.

Salinger's eyes flickered open. Her heart seemed to miss a beat. "Hey," she said. "Hey, stay with me, okay? It's gonna be fine, yeah, just don't fall asleep, okay? Please?"

"The gun. Take… the gun," he croaked.

"I... the... what? The gun? Okay. Yeah. I take the gun, okay," she stammered, taking the gun out of his right hand. She heard a noise from behind her. The man who had shot Salinger was trying to get up again. She hadn't hit his head hard enough. She held the gun, her hands shaking hard, aimed for his back, pulled the trigger. He fell down, and Jo almost fell backwards from the repercussion.

"Josephine, get the lights!" Steve's voice was like a slap in the face. She got up, the gun still in her hand, ran to the computer and typed the order in.

"Lights on," she said into the communicator, her voice hollow, rushing back to Salinger on the floor.

"Now get out," he said.

"I can't," she breathed. "We were attacked."

"Don't move."


	8. February 13

**8\. February 13**

It can't have taken them more than five minutes. She was sitting next to Salinger, her hand on his wound, her other hand still clutching the gun. When she heard people running outside, she aimed for the door. It flew open, and Steve and Natasha were standing there, along with six or seven men from the S.T.R.I.K.E. unit. She put the gun down again, shaking hard.

People were surrounding Salinger, Natasha was drawing her up, grabbing her hard on the shoulders and shaking her. "Jo, how long are the doors going to hold?" Jo looked up slowly.

"Not long enough," she said.

Natasha let go of her and put her wrist to her mouth. "Get the carrier to the clearing ASAP," she said.

Two people were lifting Salinger up and moved out of the door, the other S.T.R.I.K.E. team members following suit. Natasha tried to lead Jo out of the room, but the latter tore herself free and pulled the USB-Stick out of the computer. Then they left the room with Steve making up the rear.

"The others?" Suddenly Jo realized that those few S.T.R.I.K.E. team members couldn't have been all of them.

"Outside," Steve said. "Guarding the entrance. All of them alive," he added when he saw her face.

The helicarrier was just outside the hidden entrance, with most of the team members already in it. It started to rise as soon as the last of them had entered it, even though the ramp wasn't fully closed yet.

Salinger was being treated in the front part of the carrier. Natasha had let go of her arm after the carrier had reached full altitude and Jo, after standing for a few seconds, went to the curved wall of the carrier and slid down, drawing her legs to her body, still staring at her bloodstained hands. Concentrating on breathing regularly, she didn't hear anything that was going on in the carrier until someone held a towel in front of her. She looked up and saw Steve standing in front of her.

"We'll be in Thompson in five minutes," he said. "There's a small S.H.I.E.L.D. branch just outside the city. They're going to take Salinger to the hospital there, and we'll go on to Washington"

She nodded and took the towel, trying to rub her hands clean of the blood. He sat down next to her.

"He's alive because of you," Steve said.

"He's good as dead because of me," Jo replied.

"That's not true"

"I killed that man in the room. The one who shot Salinger," Jo's voice was hollow. There was no emotion in it, just a faint tremor. "I knocked him out after he shot him, I don't know how I did it, but I did. I thought… I hoped it was enough, but then he got up again and I had Salinger's gun in my hand and pulled the trigger and he collapsed on the floor and there was all this blood on Salinger and his pulse was growing fainter by the second and I didn't know what to do… I shouldn't have been there in the first place" She was still rubbing on her hands with the towel. It had bright and dark red stains on it now, but her hands were still filthy.

"You're right," Steve said quietly. "Fury shouldn't have sent you there, but you did a great job. None of us could have controlled the computer systems – not that fast anyway. Decryption software takes its time and hardly ever goes undetected for longer than a minute. You were surprised, it can happen. You survived, and that counts"

She said nothing, just continued to rub her cold fingers on the towel. She only realized that the background noise from the aircraft had been there when it stopped. The backramp of the carrier opened and outside she saw people running towards them, some of them dragging a barrow. Within a matter of a few seconds, some members of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team, carrying Salinger, had left the helicarrier and were met by the doctors outside. Salinger was put on the barrow and they ran towards the doors on the other side of the roof. The doors closed again and she could feel the metal rumbling when they gained height and took off once more. Jo and Steve sat in silence for a while. She was still frantically trying to clean her hands with the dry towel while he was watching her uncomfortably, seemingly not knowing what to say. After a while, he held up his hand.

"Please don't," Jo whispered.

He put his hand down again.

Jo wasn't sure whether the blood on her hands was still Salinger's, or whether she had rubbed open her own hands by now as well.

A gentle hand took the towel out of her grasp and put her hands on her knees. Jo looked up and saw Natasha, crouched down opposite her and looking her worriedly in the face. "He's going to make it, you know," Natasha said gently. When Jo only stared at her, a disbelieving look etched on her face, Natasha smiled. "He was awake when they carried him outside. He's going to be fine. Lost a lot of blood, but he's going to live"

Two hours later, the helicarrier landed on the access road in front of the Triskelion. The rain was still pouring down, just as it had when they had taken off for Nunavut a few hours ago.

They left the carrier and Jo followed the others into the building and from there to Fury's office, where he and Hill were waiting for their report.

To Jo, it all happened in a daze. She duly answered all of the questions she was asked without really comprehending the bigger picture. She didn't pay attention to what Steve, Natasha and Rumlow had to say about their mission, only listened up once when she heard the name Salinger, but all Fury told them was that he was still in the OR.

She had no idea how long the interrogation in Fury's office lasted, but when he finally dismissed them, the rain had stopped.

Dark clouds were still hanging low in the sky when Natasha, Steve and Jo got into Natasha's car. Natasha and Steve were talking quietly while Jo was staring out of the window and tried not to touch anything with her filthy hands.

Steve held the door open for her when Natasha let them out in front of their apartment-complex. He also held the entrance door open for her, but they went up the stairs in silence.

"Ahm… good night, then," she said reluctantly.

Slowly he shook his head. "You shouldn't be alone tonight," he said, fumbling in his pockets for his ID.

"I know," she said. "I just… I want to take a shower… get the blood off my hands" She promised him that she would come over after taking said shower. He smiled in response and waited for her to get her ID card and enter the flat before he opened his own door.

She turned on the lights in her flat. It was quiet, too quiet, much too quiet. She shrugged off the coat, turned on the TV, just to have some background noise, and went straight to the bathroom, where she undressed of her combat gear with some difficulty and got under the much too hot water. She just stood there, looking at her hands and how the blood was slowly flushed away by the hot water. Despite the hot water, she was shaking when she rubbed the last of the blood away with soap and a brush.

She got out of the shower again, wrapped a towel around her body and went to the bedroom to get dressed. She chose some jeans that were one size too big and her green college sweater, pulled her dark hair into a ponytail and left the room. She turned off the TV again, silence surrounding her once more, and left the apartment hurriedly.

She knocked on Steve's door and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. Seconds before Steve answered the door she realized that she had forgotten to put on socks or shoes and was thus standing barefoot on the cold floor.

Steve opened the door with a smile on his face and told her to come in. His hair was wet, so she was sure he had also taken a shower just now. He wore a simple black T-Shirt and blue jeans. He was barefoot, too, she noticed immediately. "Come in," he said lightly.

She followed his invitation. Music was playing quietly in the background – she guessed it was something from the 1940's. Jo had been here several times, especially in the first months since late August of last year, when she hadn't had her own washing machine yet and Steve had offered to use his in the meantime. She stood in the middle of the room, feeling lost, until he indicated the kitchen table. Two steaming mugs were standing on it, and she sat down and took the cup gratefully in her cold hands.

Steve sat down next to her, but didn't touch his mug. "Hill just called," he said. "Salinger is out of the OR. He's going to be fine"

"That's good," she said flatly.

"How do you feel?"

Jo shrugged. "I still hear the shots," she said after a while of staring at her tea. "And when I close my eyes I see Salinger being shot. And the man I shot… I see him die. Again and again"

Steve nodded.

"Does it get better?" Jo asked.

He was silent for a moment. "Yes," he said then. "But you don't get used to it. I don't, at least"

"Does it… stop? The pictures, and the sounds?"

Steve watched her intently. "No," he said then. "You don't hear it that often, and you don't see it that often, but it's still there, as long as you're alive" They sat in silence again, Jo clutching the cup in her cold hands, her feet nervously shuffling on the floor. "I saw my best friend die" Steve said suddenly.

Jo looked up surprised.

"I thought it might help you believe that you can live with the sounds and images," he said and shrugged.

"How?" Jo asked.

"It was during the war," he said. "We had a mission to stop a train in the Italian alps. It all went quite well until… yeah, well, until Bucky was thrown out of that train at full speed. I couldn't grab him and he fell down that mountain. Sometimes I still hear his screams"

"I'm sorry," Jo whispered.

He waved it aside. "It was war, back then, and we were soldiers. Deep inside you knew that day could come when you would lose your friends. You hoped, but the danger was there. He would be dead now anyway, like the rest of them, seeing as it's happened about seventy years ago"

"He was still your friend," Jo said.

"And you're a civilian, more or less. It's good and right you feel the way you feel. You shouldn't forget it, whatever happens" He smiled wryly and took a sip of his tea.

She nodded, drinking from the tea as well. "Thank you," she said, looking at her hands.

"It's nothing," he replied. Then, after a while of silent tea drinking at the kitchen table, he got up and put the cups on the counter next to the sink. "Want to watch a movie?" He looked at her expectantly, his head cocked to the right side, his thumps casually in the belt loops of his jeans.

"Sure," she said and smiled, for the first time in what felt like weeks but was only hours. "You've never seen Star Wars, have you?"

Dear lovebird,

I still haven't figured out how to reply to you, so I'm doing it here – thank you so, so much for your lovely reviews :)


	9. April 7

**9\. April 7**

„So are you coming or not?" She was leaning on the doorframe, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Her demonstration of casualty was as faked as she could muster it. "Because, Steve, you know, I'm really trying here, you could at least say that you'll come. Or not, I don't care, just… you know, give me an answer, okay?"

Steve chuckled. He didn't make a sound, but she saw his shoulders tremble.

"It's not funny"

He turned around to her, a grin on his face. There he was, sitting on a chair in a small room at the Triskelion. It was just the two of them here. "It is funny," he said.

"No, it's not. It took me long enough to get Natasha to come. She said she didn't trust me with this issue at all. I really can't do this if I don't know whether you're going to come or you aren't, so would you stop drawing now, or whatever it is you're doing, and answer me?"

"Josephine, I am going to come. Of course I am. I told you so when you first asked me, and the second time as well. I told you I'd come ten minutes ago, and then five minutes ago again. And I'm telling you now, but I swear that this is going to be the last time"

"Oh right," Jo said and run her hands through her hair. She had asked him already. "It's just that I'm really nervous, okay?"

Steve turned around and cocked his head to the side. "I really don't see why," he replied. "It's not like you hadn't invited us over to dinner for Christmas Eve"

"That's different. I mean, totally different, it was just some Chinese Take Away back then. And I really want to prove Natasha to be wrong when she says she doesn't trust me with a simple dinner"

"I don't think Natasha is that much of a cook herself" Steve smirked, stood up from his chair and came over to the door. "Listen," he said. "I need to go right now, but I'll come over at around seven, okay?"

"Okay," she said to herself, looking at the simple watch on her wrist. It was half past six, and she was almost on schedule. "Okay," she said again. "What did I miss?"

Jo looked around herself. The kitchen looked like a crime scene in a splatter movie, with tomato sauce dripping from just about every surface, but there was still enough boiling slowly in the pan to feed four people, including Steve. The meatballs were being kept warm in the oven and the salad was in the fridge. She had bought the dressing from the supermarket, but she had already tried it, and it was good enough. Better than she could do herself, that much was for sure. Cooking the pasta could wait until the others were there, so she started to scrub the kitchen clean, using almost two rolls of Kleenex to wipe everything up. Jo looked at the overflowing rubbish bin.

I'll have to get the rubbish down before they come, she thought. She looked at her watch again – Steve would be here in less than fifteen minutes. Quickly she put the dirty cookware in the dishwasher, stirred the sauce and then looked down at herself. She was a mess. Had the tomato sauce not been an orange shade of red, she would have been sure she was the victim of a psychopathic serial killer. There were blotches of sauce all over her, and she was sure there was even some in her hair.

"Shower," she muttered to herself and stormed of to the bathroom.

The doorbell rang two minutes early. She pulled the dress over her head, tied her hair into a messy bun and ran for the door.

She drew it open to find Steve standing in front of it, a bottle of wine in his hands. He was wearing blue jeans and a grey button-down shirt. "Hey," he said.

"Why don't you come in?" Jo stepped aside to let him in and he went past her into the flat, stopping in the middle of the room, right between the kitchen table and the sofa, holding the wine out to her when she followed.

"I was thinking about bringing you flowers, but it felt… weird somehow… ahm. Yeah"

She took the wine out of his hands, examining the bottle. It was a rather expensive looking red wine from Italy, Cabernet Sauvignon according to the label. "Thank you," she said smiling. "It's a lot better than flowers. I tend to kill flowers within a day. Even my cactus died within two weeks. Ahm… Do you want to drink something? Water? Wine? Beer?" Jo gestured towards the kitchen table and he sat down.

"Water's fine. You really are nervous, aren't you?" Steve chuckled.

"It's not that funny, you know? I've never cooked dinner for others before, of course I'm nervous" She opened the fridge to retrieve a bottle of water for Steve and a coke for herself.

"It smells good, okay?"

Jo sighed. At least he sounded honest, and Steve wasn't someone to not tell the truth. She handed him the water and a glass and sat down, pouring herself a glass of coke. "Thanks," she said. "Natasha and Clint should be here in about ten minutes, maybe twenty"

"You never said why you invited us," Steve asked suddenly.

Jo shrugged. "Whyever not," she said. "You're the only… people I know here"

"People you know?" He chuckled. "That doesn't sound very nice to me"

"What would you say?"

"How about friends?"

She said nothing for a few moments. She had never considered Natasha, Clint or Steve to be friends. She would have liked to, sure, but she had never done so. "I don't make friends that easily," she replied then.

"People often say that. You guys don't really trust each other nowadays, right?"

"Captain Obvious is back at work, hm?" Jo smirked. "No, you're right. And I'd… I'd really like to be friends, you know. With you"

He made to answer but was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. "Sorry," he said, took it out of the pocket of his jeans and answered the call. Jo waited patiently to a lot of _ahs_ , _mhms_ and _okays_. "Yeah, I'll tell her. Right" He pressed a button to cancel the call. "That was Natasha," he said. "I'm really sorry, but…"

"Secret mission," she interrupted. "All of you, right?"

He nodded, smiling sadly. "Not secret, really, but yeah. Sitwell called Natasha just now. She's picking me up here in two minutes. I'm to tell you that she was already on her way, and that she and Barton are sorry"

"Is it about C.R.O.S.S., or about something else?" There hadn't been any news on behalf of the organization for weeks. She had been told only one piece of information – its name.

"No, I don't think so," he said. "I'd tell you if it were different"

"I know," she said and smiled as they stood up and made for the door. "It's okay, really" She wanted to hug him goodbye, or at least do _something_. She wanted to tell him to take care, to not do anything stupid, to make sure he'd come back. She did none of it. "Good luck," she said as she opened the door and he left the flat.

Steve smiled in return. "Thanks," he said. And then, just before he opened the door to his apartment, he turned around again. "I'll see you tomorrow, right? We could go to the movies. That's what friends do, right?"

Jo laughed shortly. "Yeah, okay," she said. Just make sure you do come back, she thought as he vanished into his flat.


	10. June 10

**10\. June 10**

Never had she imagined summer in D.C. would be so hot.

Jo opened the window of her apartment, only to close them again a few moments later, as only more heat seemed to pour in from the outside. The sky was dark, heavy clouds hanging so low they seemed to touch the skyscrapers in Downtown. The question was not whether a storm was coming, but when it would start.

She shrugged and went to the bathroom. After a long, hard day of work, all she wanted was to take a long shower and sit in front of the TV with a glass of wine until she fell asleep. Enjoying the feeling of normality as long as it would last.

When she got out of the bathroom into her bedroom, dressed in a black tank top and short sweatpants, the thunderstorm had arrived. From the window she could see the harsh light of lightning, followed seconds after by growling thunder. A cracking sound came from the ceiling and the light went off.

"For god's sake, not now", she mumbled to herself. She went to the door, hammering on the light switch, but it didn't give her the intended result. Rolling her eyes, she went to the next room in order to search for a new lightbulb, punching the light switch of the living room, but to no avail. She stood still for a moment, then went to the kitchenette and opened the fridge. It was dark inside and didn't make a noise. Electricity was off, lightning must have found its aim.

Using the rest of the dim evening light, she fumbled in the kitchen drawers for spare batteries, a torch and the old radio, which was old enough to still work on batteries. She inserted some in it and tuned it to a local radio station. It started out as white noise, but while she was searching for her old lamp in her bedroom it became a slightly nervous voice telling everyone who would listen that there was a blackout in most of D.C. due to a stroke of lightning hitting the city's main energy supplier.

She went back to the kitchen with the small lamp in her hands and fumbled the batteries into it, bathing the kitchen in a soft, glowing light. She just hoped the bulb wouldn't fail her during the blackout. Jo opened the fridge just to do something, saw a bottle of white wine and took it out. "Ah well, while it's still cool…", she said to herself. Then she pulled a glass out of a shelf next to the fridge and poured herself some wine.

"Oh goddamn it" She heard a familiar voice cursing in the hallway.

She got up, still holding the glass of wine which was only half-full by now, opened the door and stuck her head out.

"What's wrong?", she asked, stepping out of the doorframe, but making sure she had a foot stuck in the door to hinder it from falling closed.

Steve was standing in front of his door, a grocery bag in his hands, kicking the door half-heartedly. "It won't open", he said.

"Must be because of the blackout", she replied. "The locks must run on the same circuit as the rest of the house. Not very smart, if you ask me…"

"Yeah, great", he said sarcastically. "At least now I know why I'm locked out. And you?", he said, nodding to the glass of wine in her hand, grinning as he did so. "Having a good time?"

"Want to join?", she offered.

"I'd love to." He smiled gratefully and she let him enter the flat before closing the door again.

She took the bag from his hands. "Groceries, I take it?", she said, and when he nodded she put it in the fridge. "Let's just hope it stays cool long enough"

"It's quite nice here, now", he said, looking around the small flat. "I like the green walls." He had only been here three times before, on her first night and then again sometime around Christmas, when she had invited him, Natasha, and Clint, over to dinner, ordered from a Chinese Take-Away down the street. And then, very shortly, in April. "What about the radio and the lamp, though?"

"Batteries", she replied. "My dad always told me to have some batteries and an old radio at the ready, just in case… and while I say this I realize that I just imagined this to having happened" She drank some wine on that.

He grinned and sat down on the kitchen table. "Still a good plan", he said.

"Want some wine? Or anything else?"

"Anything at all", he just said, so she poured him a glass of wine as well, then went over to the table and sat down opposite him.

"So, where did you go?", she asked.

"What do you mean?", he said.

"I noticed you'd leave the building every Tuesday, not coming back for hours. I'd of thought you went running, but then you're never wearing sports gear. I'm just curious, you know" She smiled at him, then emptied her glass and got up.

"I'm just visiting an old friend", he replied. "And good spotting there, that's fifty points for you"

"Fifty?", she laughed as she went to the counter and took the bottle. "A hundred at the very least!" She got over again and sat back down. "So about your old friend. Old as in…?"

"Peggy Carter", he said.

"Oh my…" She put down the bottle. "I didn't know she was still alive. How is she?"

"How do you know about her?"

"I'm known to do my research. It's sort of my special superpower. But you're avoiding answering…"

"She's old", he said quietly. "Suffers from dementia"

"I'm sorry", she said.

"She's got some good days, though. It's quite nice when she's got her lucid moments, but otherwise it's tough having one of your best friends not knowing you. Well, you know, let's talk about something brighter, yeah?" He took the last sip of his glass, and she refilled it without waiting for him to ask her to do so.

"Sure", she said. Trying to think of another topic, she listened halfheartedly to the radio in the background. The host droned on about the increasing birth rate he expected to come in nine months. "Have you asked Sarah on a date yet?"

He chuckled.

"So I take this as a yes, okay?"

"Last week, actually", he replied. "But I think I screwed up"

"Tell me. I was also called Dr Date in my classes"

"It was alright in my opinion", he said slowly.

"What did you guys do?"

"I took her to a movie, paid for popcorn and soda, and after that… well, after that I dropped her off at her flat again. You know, the way it's to be done, isn't it?"

She stared at him with her eyes wide open.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"And that is it? Like, all of it?", she wanted to know.

"Yeah, sure, that's what you do, isn't it? I thought taking her dancing was a little old-fashioned."

"Maybe like seventy years ago", she said, laughing. "Maybe even fifty years ago, but not now. That's like the same stuff we did three weeks ago. Paying for the ticket and the snacks doesn't make it a real date. Dancing would have been way better."

When he said nothing, she stopped laughing again.

"Sorry", she said, still chuckling a little. "It's just that you really shouldn't go to a movie for the first date. At least go to dinner before that, or after. But not just the cinema."

"You reckon?", he asked.

"Yes, I do… and I see your glass is all empty again" She reached for the bottle only to find it empty, too. "Jesus", she chuckled. "That one went down fast…"

A siren sounded from the window, going by fast. The radio host wondered how long it would take the city to restore electricity.

"Feel like Scotch?", she said after a few moments of silence. "I got a fine one here. You know, the one Clint brought with him on Christmas."

After about two hours, still in the ambient light of the single lamp on the table, the storm outside ravaging D.C., the last drop of Whiskey left the bottle into Steve's glass.

"You, like, drank about three times as much as I did", Jo giggled and held her glass high. "On Clint and his excellent Whiskey."

"On blackouts," he grinned and clinked her glass lightly with his own. "And I only drank so much more because my system's working that much faster."

"But," she replied. "You really are kind of drunk by now. Not as much as I am, yeah, but you are. Oh, just wait, I'll make the best Pangalactic Gargleblaster in the whole Universe, it'll so knock you off your feet" She got up and, somewhat unsteadily, went to the counter and took out a long drink glass from a shelf.

"What is a Pangalactic Gargle… something?"

She turned around to him, raising an eyebrow. "Good lord, Steve, don't you ever read a book?"

"I read Harry Potter. It was weird."

She rolled her eyes and started to pull out just about every alcoholic beverage she could find. "The Gargleblaster is from a book and supposed to be the strongest drink in the Universe", she explained. "And as it's fiction, there's no real recipe to it. The only rule when mixing it is for it to be seriously strong and tasty"

"And you want to drink this?", he wanted to know.

"Oh no, I won't, that'd kill me today. This one is just for you, I'm gonna stick with something simpler. Like…" she said, looking around the kitchenette. "Like wine." She poured a sample of all different sorts of alcohol in the glass and then added a sip of orange juice to it. She stirred the mixture with a long spoon, poured herself a glass of wine and walked back to the table, where she put the long drink glass in front of Steve and sat down next to him. "There you go", she said.

"It looks disgusting," he remarked.

"Go on, try first, bicker later"

He took the glass and held it to the dim light of the lamp. "It looks like it's already been eaten. At least twice."

"Must be the Bailey's. Go on, drink it."

With one more skeptical look in her direction he emptied the glass in one go, then shook his head.

"Wait for it," she said before he could open his mouth. "Just two more seconds."

"Okay, it's not that bad," he acknowledged.

"Yeah," he said later and leaned back, having just finished his fourth of fifth Gargleblaster. It was well past midnight and the storm was still raging, the radio host still complaining about the lack of electricity in the city, and the lack of emergency generators, which seemed to be restricted to hospitals. And his very radio station, which was why he felt obliged to tell the part of D.C. still having electricity about it. "Yeah, I do agree, it really kicks ass, this drink."

She merely giggled. "Another one?" she said and made to stand up.

"No, no, it's okay, right, it's okay," he laughed and pulled her back on her chair.

It was the first time he touched her, and her skin prickled where his hand had been. "Feel drunk now?" she asked quickly.

"More than I've felt since 1943," he said and made her giggle again.

"This is just too weird," she laughed.

"You mean getting drunk with someone who's seen 1943?"

"Kinda. But no, not really, it's something else. Ah, well, I don't really know. It's the first time we've really been talking without ever speaking about work, you know? It's just weird. Everything. My life and the rest. And yours. Don't you think?"

He just smiled knowingly and replied nothing.

"You know what? I think we should drink a round of water, yeah?" She giggled again, got up unsteadily and went to the fridge from which she took two bottles of water. "Look at that", she said surprised. "They're still sort of cool. There you go, catch it" She threw the bottle towards him, but it was much too high, so he got up quickly to seize it.

"You're a bad shot", he said surprised.

"I am, yeah. A terrible one" She smiled. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

"Because I thought, you know, what with all the training you got since September, and with the training you must've gotten in your childhood, that your skills were better"

"They are in about every other aspect", she said. "I don't mind being a bad shot. Never liked firearms, really. Being shot, and then Nunavut… that was kind of enough for me… I'm good at disarming, though" She fumbled on her water bottle, but the cap wouldn't budge. "While we're talking about improved skills, my water bottle opening ones aren't exactly working. Would you mind?" She held the bottle out to him, so he came over, took it out of her hands and opened it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Which it probably was.

He stood right in front of her, his arms almost touching hers, his legs mere millimeters away from hers. He was much too close. She could see his unusually dark blue eyes, could see every single eyelash, even the bristles on his chin. He was much too close…

"Is it really only the fourth time you're here?", she said quickly.

"The first one doesn't count", he answered. "You fell asleep half an hour into the movie"

"That's because you brought this weird and very boring 1940's Italian classic. With subtitles"

"It was state of the art back in the forties," he smirked. "Here", he said and gave her the now open bottle. She took it out of his hand, holding her arm in an awkward angle, brushing his fingers as she did so. She put the bottle down on the counter to her right.

"We should…" he began, somewhat unsure.

"Mhm", she made.

Nobody moved. Jo looked him straight in the eyes. He didn't even blink.

"Really", he said again.

She only nodded. They were still standing at the counter, only millimeters apart. He was much too close.


	11. June 11

**11\. June 11**

The alarm went off like a herd of Mongols riding right through her head. Jo turned it off with her eyes closed and slowly got up, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in her left temple.

She got up and went to the bathroom to have a quick and very cold shower. She felt better afterwards. Then she brushed her teeth, got dressed, almost fell over some clothes lying scattered on the floor and went back to the bedroom to find Steve sleeping in her bed.

"Dear god", she mumbled.

Pictures of last night appeared before her inner eye. Drinks, too many of them, by far too many. Steve, standing right in front of her. His dark blue eyes. The sensation of skin on skin… Black.

What had happened? Oh god, what had happened?

She withstood the urge to wake him up. She remembered how had told her some months ago that he had trouble sleeping, right after Nunavut, so she went quietly out of the room and into the living room, where she grabbed her bag. She stopped at the kitchen table, where yesterdays' remains were standing. The empty bottle of Whiskey, with matching tumblers. Two bottles of wine, white and red, and two mismatched glasses. A whole lot of other bottles that had once contained alcoholic drinks of different sorts. Steve's long drink glass was still on the table. A full bottle of water, still open, stood on the counter. She picked it up and emptied it in one go, then opened the fridge to take out another one. The light in the frige was on, so electricity was back. Holding the cool bottle in her hand, she decided to take another one as well and put them in her bag. She made for the door, but thought twice about it and grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from a drawer and wrote a note for Steve to find when he would get up.

In the twenty minutes it took her to reach the Triskelion she emptied both bottles of water, each in one go. Unfortunately she hadn't thought of taking a pill against headaches.

She entered the building to the bustle of a new workday, making her way straight to the elevators on the far wall. An empty one arrived just as she stopped in front of the wall, making her wonder once more whether there sensors in the floor, calling for elevators.

She entered the elevator and leaned on the glass front that faced outside and offered a stunning panorama of D.C.

"Coffee", she just said absentmindedly.

"Request approved." The computer voice ringed right in her head. It felt as if her head would split clean in half.

"Quiet," she groaned and closed her eyes, but still she was wondering how the computer had understood what _coffee_ meant.

The elevator stopped in the seventh floor, where she headed directly to the room on the far left side. It offered a few glass tables with perfectly matching chairs and a rather uncomfortable looking couch. Most of all, there was a small side table in a corner with a jug of coffee, several dark mugs, sugar, and milk, as well as some cookies. Nobody but her was there, so she took the first mug she could reach and poured herself a coffee, to which she added by far too many spoonfuls of sugar. She took the mug and sat down on a table, took a deep sip of the delicious coffee and laid her head on the cool table. She closed her eyes… just for a second…

A splitting sound woke her up and made her jump. Looking up, she saw Natasha sitting opposite her, having placed a cup of coffee right in front of her. The coffee mug being put on the table must have made that wretched sound. Natasha smirked when she saw her face.

"'s not funny," Jo groaned.

"You look terrible", Natasha said. "Had a deep look into a bottle last night, then?"

"Don't even get me started…" Jo said.

"Seen Steve today?" Natasha inquired.

Jo hoped that her face hadn't turned the colour of a tomato when she said that she hadn't seen him.

"Too bad."

"Why're you asking?", Jo wanted to know.

"It's nothing," Natasha answered. "I just thought that, with the two of you going to cinema a few weeks ago, and you being next-door-neighbors, Steve was really opening up to you. He could really do with a friend, you know"

"We're not dating, if that's what you're talking about"

Natasha chuckled and shook her head lightly. "That's not what I was thinking about, no."

"He had a date with Sarah, did you know that?"

"Is this gossip, here? From you?" Natasha grinned and leaned closer when Jo didn't answer, but merely smiled. "How do you know?"

"Well, he's told me," Jo said.

"How was it?"

"What do you think?"

"He screwed up?" Natasha asked.

"Indeed, he did. Well, at least he treated her like it was the 40's all over again, and she didn't seem to like it that much. Hasn't called since"

"Poor Steve," Natasha said. "When did he tell you?"

Jo said nothing. She didn't even know why she didn't want Natasha to know about last night. Maybe because she didn't know herself what had happened, or rather-

"Are you going all red on me?" Natasha said jokingly and took her mug.

"No, I'm… am I? I am, right?" Jo made a face and buried her head in her arms. When she looked up again, Natasha was staring at her, her hand holding the mug frozen in midair. "Natasha?" she asked tentatively.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Natasha put the mug down again.

"No, I… Yes… No, I mean… no, I don't know…" Jo took her own mug, carefully avoiding looking Natasha in the eyes, and drank a sip of coffee. It was cold, and far too sweet.

"You don't know?" Natasha asked incredulously.

"I… yeah, we were pretty drunk last night. We had a blackout in the house, and Steve was locked out, and we started drinking-"

"But he can't get drunk"

"Ever gave him a Pangalactic Gargleblaster?" Jo remarked dryly.

"Go on"

"I don't know how to go on, I don't remember. I woke up this morning and he was lying next to me in my bed, fast asleep… Then I came here"

Natasha looked like she was about to start laughing.

"Don't," Jo said. "Just don't, okay? Please?"

"You two should talk about it, you know that?" Natasha said and drank from her coffee.

"I know"

They said nothing for a few moments.

"It's just," Jo started. "I didn't know I was this sort of person. I didn't know he was-"

"Agent Marlow?"

It made her jump. She turned around and saw a pale young woman, dressed in a blouse and dress pants, looking at her expectantly.

"Yes?" Jo said.

"Mr Fury wants to talk to you."

She swallowed. What did, what could Fury want from her? "In a minute, yeah?"

"Miss, he said it was urgent."

She exchanged looks with Natasha, who shook her head slightly and shrugged.

"I'm coming," Jo said and stood up.

She had a feeling this wasn't going to be good news.


	12. June 11 (2)

**12\. June 11**

She left Fury's office an hour later, feeling empty. Her head was so full of thoughts that she had no idea what to do next. Fury had given her a new appointment, starting in two hours. This appointment meant going away. Far away.

Jo pressed the button on the wall, calling up an elevator. The doors opened a few seconds later and she entered it. The doors closed. She just stared through the glass panels, silently looking out at D.C.'s downtown and the memorial buildings, the sunlight reflecting on the Potomac.

"Ground floor," she said finally.

"Request approved," the computer voice answered and the elevator started going down.

It stopped after just a few floors, the doors opened and several people walked in, clad both in suits and combat gear, respectively. The elevator continued to make its way downstairs, stopping every now and then to let people out, without others getting in. When the last person – Jo thought it might have been Cheryl from statistics – left the elevator, Jo was alone again, with only six floors left. Nobody else entered the elevator on the way down the last few floors.

When the doors opened, she left the elevator into the lobby, contemplating on whether she should grab a cab or walk the way home. Natasha was standing there, leaning casually on the giant eagle statue. She pushed herself off it and walked straight towards Jo, who stopped where she was standing.

"We should go", Natasha said before Jo could even think about a greeting. She nodded and without another word, Natasha led her from the building towards the pond in front of the Triskelion, to the coffee stall. Natasha bought two cups of coffee, one with extra espresso-shots, while Jo was waiting for her to start talking. "There you go", Natasha said, handing her the cup that contained the extra strong coffee and a few packages of sugar. "You look like you could do with it"

"Ahm, yeah, thanks," Jo said slowly, taking the cup gratefully but still confused. It wasn't like Natasha to pay for coffee. "It's not very much like you to pay for coffee", she said.

Natasha smirked. "Got me there", she said. "I heard about it. Two hours, hm?", was all she answered.

"Mhm," Jo made.

"It sounds great, though. There might really be something behind all of this"

"Think so?" Jo asked. "I don't know…"

"What do you mean?" Natasha asked, looking out over the Potomac towards the Lincoln Memorial.

"It's quite a big deal, isn't it?" Jo said, taking a sip of her coffee. It was very hot, very sweet and very strong. Just what she needed right now. "Going to El Salvador on my own with a mission of finding out whether or not these guys are operating there."

"You won't be totally on your own. There's a S.H.I.E.L.D. branch in San Salvador"

"I just don't think I'll come back. Alive"

Natasha leaned back slowly, looking her directly in the eyes, and gave her a wry smile. "You won't die there," she said. "Remember Nunavut? You did a great job there, and that was your first ever mission."

Jo shrugged. "And the last one up until now. I just don't have a good feeling about this."

Natasha shook her head and smiled. "But of course you'll come back," she said. "Did you tell Nick about this? That you're not sure?"

Jo thought about it for a few seconds before she answered. "No," she said then. "I don't think it'd have influenced him."

Natasha cocked her head to the side and took the empty paper cup from her hands. "You're right," she replied. "Nick knows what he's doing, and if he had second thoughts he wouldn't send you there."

Jo nodded halfheartedly.

"Want me to drive you home?"

Jo climbed the third set of stairs, still not sure what she should do first.

Talk to Steve, pack her suitcase, panic? All of them combined?

She paused in front of his door, but decided against it and went the few steps to her own, swiping her ID card through the reader and opening her door. She entered her flat and was surprised to find the kitchen table neat and cleaned of yesterday's remains. No wine or whiskey bottles, no dirty glasses, nothing.

An involuntary smile crossed her face as she went to her bedroom, heaved the suitcase from the wardrobe and searched through her clothes, deciding which to take with her.

After a while, everything but her laptop was packed, and she placed it on top of her things, then shut the suitcase and sat down on her bed. She sighed and got up again. Searching through the drawers of her desk, she finally retrieved the most important documents – passport, health insurance and her S.H.I. . internals. She packed all of those in her bag and went to the kitchen. Thankfully, there weren't any perishables in the fridge – she had wanted to go shopping today. Only now did she see the piece of paper on the table and picked it up. It wasn't hers, and when she recognized his writing, another involuntary smile crossed her face, vanishing in almost the same second.

Better get it done, she thought, realizing upon looking at her watch that she only had fifteen minutes left before she would be picked up.

Dragging her suitcase after her, she left the flat, closing the door after her.

In front of Steve's door, Jo watched amazedly how her hands started to shake when she made to knock. Nobody answered the door.

Smiling sadly she went downstairs, planning to wait in front of the house for her pick-up.

Outside she went to the café next door and got herself the third coffee of the day, this time a Macadamia-Frappuccino – probably the last one for a long time. She really needed the caffeine and the sugar, even though it didn't help with the nervousness, at all.

Just as she got back to the house, Steve came around the corner. She stopped dead, staring at him, her pulse running, and tried to smile.

"Hey there," Steve said as he stopped in front of her.

"Hey," she replied.

"Ahm," he said. "You're okay?"

She said nothing for a few moments. "Yeah, ahm… yeah. Hungover, quite so. You? Did you sleep well?" Jo tried to avoid to look him in the eyes, afraid she would freak out if she did so.

"Yeah, yeah, I did. And hungover? Pretty much." He grinned and indicated the plastic bag with a sign of the Chinese Takeaway down the road.

"Ah," she made.

"Is that your suitcase?" he asked suddenly, beckoning towards the item next to the front door.

Jo sighed. "Yes," she said then.

"Josephine?" She couldn't quite collate his tone of voice. Angry? Aghast? Scornful?

"I haven't got much time," she interrupted him. "We should… It's… Fury gave me a mission", she said weakly. "In Central America. El Salvador, more exactly. I might find out about my past there. It's a… chance"

"Yeah, I see that," he said. Did he sound sad? Confused? Bitter? Angry? She couldn't tell.

"We should… talk…" she murmured and put her hand on his forearm. The touch sent a little shiver down her arm and her spine.

"I know", was all he said. "It was…"

"I really don't know…" she started.

A car pulled up next to them and she immediately let go of his arm. Its horn sounded before the driver bothered to open the dark tinted window.

"Agent Marlow?" he said. "It's time"

"Yeah, just a second, okay?" Jo replied, cursing the driver for his lack of tact.

"You should go," Steve said. "We'll talk when you get back, okay?"

The driver honked again.

"For god's sake, put the suitcase in the trunk if you need something to do," she snapped. The driver looked sufficiently embarrassed and left the car to get the suitcase.

"Steve," she started. "Are you… angry?"

"What?" He sounded genuinely surprised. "No, of course not. We'll talk when you get back, okay?"

"What if I don't?" There. She said it, even though she didn't want to. "Get back, I mean…" she added.

He smiled, just like Natasha had, only a little sadder. "You will. I'll get you myself if I have to."

Just like Natasha.


	13. August 6 - Steve

**13\. August 6**

 _Access denied._

The red words were glaring at him from the otherwise dark monitor. He sighed, thought about it for a moment and typed in another order.

 _Access denied._

The red letters were taunting him. He groaned, irritated, and ruffled his hair with his left hand, wondering whatever order he had not tried yet. He pushed his chair back, put his hands on his knees and his hands in front of his face and exhaled. It was driving him up the wall.

There was a faint clicking noise and the lights went on.

"Steve?"

Quickly he pressed a few keys and the screen went blank. Then he turned around to face Natasha, blinking in the now brightly lit room. "Natasha," he said, trying to look delighted to see her.

"What are you doing here?"

"Nothing," he lied.

She leaned against the doorframe, cocking her head to the side and folded her arms in front of her chest, saying nothing, just looking at him expectantly. But Steve knew this game too well, and she could never get him to talk by just staring at him. "You're a terrible liar," she finally said.

"I know."

"So…?"

"Nothing."

"I'm not going to believe you, Steve," Natasha said matter-of-factly.

"What are you doing here, then?" He mimicked her, folding his arms in front of his chest and pushed his chair back a few more inches.

Natasha smiled. "Want to swap secrets, do you?" She pushed herself off the doorframe and entered the room, took another office chair and sat down on it opposite Steve.

He grinned and put his arms down again. "What secrets?" he asked. With Natasha, you never knew.

"None, really," she said and continued to smile sweetly, which was worrying. "I just want to know what you're doing here, in the middle of the night, on a Tuesday, in an office you've never visited before. However, since you don't want to tell me, how about a change of topic? Heard of Jo recently?"

He might have lost control of his face for the fraction of a second. But then, Natasha was one of the best spies S.H.I.E.L.D. had, and she would get what she wanted sooner or later anyway. Probably sooner. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. "No," he said. "Last time was three weeks ago. You?"

Natasha was fast. Sometimes, she was even too fast for him, when he didn't see it coming, like now. She had gotten up and typed an order into the keyboard before he had finished answering.

 _Access denied._

The red letters again. Blinking endlessly, almost laughing at him. Steve couldn't tell how much he hated this computer right now.

"Access denied, is it?" Natasha smirked and sat back on her chair.

"It's really none of your business." He put his hands on his legs.

"Whose file is it, Steve?"

"As I said, it's none of your business."

"It's Jo's file, right?"

Again, he lost control of his face, so there was no point in lying. "What if it was?"

"I knew it!" Natasha's smile became a triumphant one. It didn't exactly improve his mood. "I knew it," she repeated. "Why are you spying on her?"

"I'm not spying on her," he said, knowing full well that it looked like he was doing exactly this.

"And what do you think you're doing here?"

He said nothing. How should he explain to Natasha that he wanted to know why she wasn't writing anymore without Natasha having her own second thoughts about it? "Why were you so sure I was looking for Josephine's file?" he asked then. "I could be looking for something else entirely…" He didn't even believe it himself.

"It was almost a bit too simple, being honest. You never even look at a computer in here usually, and now this? After what happened between the two of you the night before she had to leave…"

Now he didn't even try to control his features. His heart might have missed a beat, his stomach clenched uncomfortably. "After what…" He shook his head. "What do you know? And… how? What did Josephine tell you?"

"You know what I was always curious about?" She had fun teasing him, he could see that in her eyes.

"What?" Steve asked irritated.

"Why do you always call her by her full name? It's not like she didn't tell you like a hundred times to not do this and call her Jo instead."

He shrugged. "It's just a nice name," he said. "You didn't answer my question, though. I thought we were swapping secrets here…"

"Is a nice name really a secret?"

Steve just made an irritated noise instead of giving a proper answer.

Natasha smiled, again. "It was more what she didn't tell me," she said then. "She talked about the blackout, about getting drunk with you, about not thinking she was that sort of person, about not thinking you were that sort of person, she said she didn't really know, and then she had to go to Fury and that's pretty much it. She didn't elaborate on the sorts of persons you are, or much rather aren't, if that's what you mean," Natasha said with a wink.

Steve sighed and finally, after Natasha didn't say anything else, shrugged. "It's not like I remember that much more," he said then. "I was drunk for the first time in about seventy years…" He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his knuckles. He saw pictures… of Josephine, standing much too close. Her dark hair framing her narrow face, her blue eyes, so light they almost seemed grey, the freckles on her pale skin. Her lips on his. And then waking up in an empty bed.

He opened his eyes again. Natasha was still grinning. "Really," she said. "I should stop trying to set you up on a date with all those girls and try Jo instead. Whatever you aren't telling me isn't much different from what she didn't say."

"I really don't like that look on your face right now," he said, trying to think of something else. Like not having heard from Josephine in several weeks now.

The smile on Natasha's face was genuine. "About that file…" She wheeled her chair closer, until she sat in front of the computer. "You're security level should be above the restriction level. You think they upgraded her?"

"I don't know" He shrugged. "I can't get in, but then that might be for other reasons"

"Let me try it. I haven't heard from her in the last three weeks as well…" Natasha's fingers slid over the keyboard in an alarming speed.

 _Access denied._

He sighed in frustration. Natasha made an indistinguishable sound of either surprise or irritation, he could not tell for sure.

"Now that's weird…" She squinted, leaned back for a moment, and then typed in another order.

 _Access denied._

Steve closed his eyes for a moment. "It's useless. Maybe she's on to something important and she is simply busy…" He did not really believe it, but he also did not want to think about what the lack of her presence and the rise of her security rating could mean.

"Wait a second" Natasha turned to him and then back to the monitor. "I've got an asset up my sleeve." She gave him a crooked grin und typed on the keyboard. Her hands seemed to fly over it.

 _Access granted._

He held his breath for a moment. The green words blinked on the dark screen, but they were not nearly as friendly as he had hoped they would be. "What did you do?" Steve asked Natasha incredulously.

"I've got Coulson's credentials, but I won't tell you how I got them."

"Coulson is dead."

"I know. I was wondering why his profiles weren't erased, but hey, we're in."

Natasha opened a file on the computer.

He had been right. He didn't like what he saw there, not at all.

Oh well… since I have no idea whether anyone is even reading it, I'm wondering if posting is even making sense. So, if you have a few spare seconds, I'd really appreciate if you told me if my writing was okay? Thank you :)


	14. August 6 - Steve (2)

**14 – August 6**

He had stormed out of the office and to the elevators and shouted Fury's name before Natasha could stop him. He could not remember when he had been this angry the last time. No, he could, but he did not want to think about it. Natasha just so managed to enter the elevator before the doors closed.

"Steve, I think we should-"

"Natasha, just don't" He stressed every syllable – something he only did when he had a hard time controlling himself.

"I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything, I'm just trying to talk sense with you. Nick might have his reasons for not telling us"

He gave her a look that clearly said that he did not want to be reasoned with.

"What do you want to tell him?" Natasha wouldn't let go of it.

"I figure something out when I'm there."

"Steve, did she write anything that could explain any of this?"

He paused for a moment. "No," he said after a second of thinking. "It's always been mostly trivia. She was afraid S.H.I.E.L.D. was reading along." If only they had, he thought. Then maybe they wouldn't be here right now and Josephine would still be…

The elevator came to a halt and the display on the wall appeared. He stretched out his hand, shaking in anger.

"Let me" Natasha gently shoved his hand aside and put her own on the display. Her palm was scanned, and the doors opened.

Again, Steve didn't wait for Natasha, but instead almost ran down the hallway. He didn't bother to knock on the first door, but Fiona wasn't there anyway. Her little office was dark, but there was light coming from the gap between door and floor, so Fury was there. He didn't even think about knocking, but threw the door open to find Hill and Fury standing in the middle of the room, deep in conversation. He stopped abruptly and Natasha ran into him. He didn't care. He didn't move one inch.

"Rogers. Romanoff. What a surprise" Fury was looking at them expectantly. "What's the matter at this time of the day?"

Steve stared at him incredulously. "Vanished?!" He clenched his hands to fists, his fingernails piercing his palms.

Fury laid his head to the side. "Come in", he said then, pointing to the chairs in front of his desk, going around the desk and sitting down behind it, with Hill following him and coming to a halt behind him.

"Come on," Natasha whispered, closed the door behind them, took his arm and led him to Fury's desk, but he flat out refused to sit down.

"Vanished?" Steve said again.

"I am right to assume we are talking about Agent Marlow here?" Fury folded his hands and leaned forward.

Steve closed his eyes for a short moment and took a deep breath, trying to control his anger.

"Yes, we are," Natasha said before he opened his eyes again. "What happened? And when?"

"And why didn't you tell us?" Steve asked in a surprisingly calm voice. His hands were clutching the back of the chair and his knuckles turned white.

"What gives you the right to demand answers to a case you're not assigned to? How did you get access to the files anyway?"

"Why are we not assigned to it?" Steve asked instead of answering.

"How long ago?" Natasha asked quietly and finally sat down on the chair.

"Three days," Maria answered. "Maybe four. She didn't report back one evening. We've been looking for her ever since. We were about to call you, actually, when you stormed in"

"You mean…"

"We found her, yes. At least we hope so" Fury typed in some orders on the keyboard in front of him and a holograph, showing a map of Central America, appeared in the center of the room. Steve only looked at the map for a second, then turned his gaze back at Fury and Hill. "Why didn't you tell us before?"

"Because you wouldn't have been of use, Rogers," Fury said and stood up again.

"There was nothing you could do," Hill said soothingly.

"So, what happened?" Natasha asked before Steve could say anything.

"We don't know for sure," Hill replied, taking turns in looking from Natasha to Steve and back. "As I said, she didn't report back one evening. The local shield branch searched her flat – nothing. So we started to dig deeper, gather information on what she had found out until now. C.R.O.S.S. really had a branch there, much like the one we found in Nunavut. It's completely deserted, and it happened in a rush. She was supposed to meet with a contact, but she didn't make it there. Apparently there was a riot in the streets that night – she vanished in the course of it. It might have been staged."

"Where is she now?" Steve demanded.

"Durango, Mexico," Fury said. "They set up their base in the mountains, in an area that's hardly accessible. Here."

He typed in some orders again, and the map zoomed in on a mountainous area. It looked deserted. There was no weird rock formation, the way it had been in Nunavut, but something was odd nonetheless.

"See the flickering?" Hill asked suddenly, and indeed, there it was. A weird sensation, like the one you experience on very hot and dry days, when the streets seem wet and the air seems to move even though the last wind you felt was days ago. Steve nodded, and from the corner of his eyes he saw Natasha do the same.

"A cloaking device," Natasha observed. "Like the helicarrier has got"

"Luckily it's not as good as ours," Fury said.

"When do we start?" It wasn't a question, and Steve didn't really wait for an answer. He was halfway to the door when Fury said they had to wait.

"Are you kidding me?" Steve exclaimed. "She's being held captive. They might be torturing her!"

The door flew open. Barton was standing in the door frame, dressed in his black combat gear, slinging the quiver around his back as he walked in. "What are we waiting for?" Barton looked from one to the other. "I'm ready, let's go."

Fury sighed in exasperation. "Barton, what are you doing here?"

"I told him to come," Natasha said. "Wrote a text, ten minutes ago."

"You can't just go while we're not even sure that she's really there," Fury said. "You can't just fly there on a wing and a prayer."

Suddenly, the holograph started to give away a greenish glow.

"That's it," Hill said. "We've got confirmation."

Finally.

"Rogers, Romanoff, Barton, take off in twenty minutes," Fury said. "Let's get her home."


	15. August 6 - Steve (3)

**15 – August 6**

It took them much too long to get to Durango.

It was only Barton, Natasha and him on the small glider on their way to the Mexican plateau. A backup S.T.R.I.K.E. team was at stand-by, ready to intervene whenever he, or Barton or Natasha, gave the command, but the actual mission was assigned only to the three of them. Everything else would require longer planning, more time. And time was something they hadn't got.

Barton was flying the glider, Natasha was sitting next to him. He was sitting in the back, clenching his hands to fists and opening them up again and again. Natasha and Barton were talking quietly, but he didn't even notice it. He had spent most of the flight in silence.

Steve closed his eyes, breathing in and out, counting to ten.

He recalled the map in the center of Fury's office. Josephine was kept in a two-story building that looked like it had once been a factory or a jail, whatever each of them were doing there. There was a small tower, about thirty feet high, in some distance. Barton was to get up there and keep an escape route free of obstacles.

He and Natasha would enter the building, split up, get Josephine and get out. In order to go in there undetected, they needed to get there by foot and take care of a distraction.

"Two minutes," Hawkeye said. "There's some anti-aircraft guns installed about a hundred and twenty yards from the building"

Steve wasn't sure whether Barton had seen the guns on the monitor. But it meant that they had to do the jump in less than a minute.

"Ouch", Natasha said a minute later, taking the hand he offered her and got up from the rocky ground. Barton had gotten the glider to fly low enough to make for a more or less safe jump. Steve looked into the distance to see the glider exploding in the sky. The anti-aircraft guns had done a proper job, that much was for sure. People inside the building would have noticed it, and hopefully would feel to be safe. Or, if everything went wrong, they were preparing for an attack.

He hadn't been on a mission this personal since 1943, so he took a deep breath, looked at Barton and Natasha and nodded.

"Let's go," Barton said.

They had separated from Barton at the watchtower. He had wished them good luck after he had forced the door open.

Steve and Natasha went on to the main building. It was easy to see from a close, but had been hardly visible from far away and they had only found it thanks to a detector Natasha had brought with her. He broke the door open, using his shield, and they entered a strangely deserted corridor. The door fell closed behind them, giving away a loud clatter and they were surrounded by an eerie silence. Nothing moved and the doors along the corridor remained closed. He didn't like it one bit.

After just a few yards came a door behind which a set of metal stairs led to the upper level, so this meant separation, again. He never liked separating on a mission that much, but this time he did not feel that there was another way, they had to be fast and Natasha was this good. She could look after herself.

They looked at each other for a second and nodded, almost at the same time. Natasha drew her gun and released its safety catch. She walked on down the corridor and he turned towards the stairs.

He put his foot on the first step, and it creaked horribly loud, so he put his foot back on the solid ground, looking up. He jumped, just so reaching the railing, drew himself up and climbed over it. Solid ground again, and no noise. Steve pried the door open and found another deserted corridor. He did not like it. They were waiting, somewhere. The door slammed shut behind him, hardly making any noise. It was dead silent.

Hoping that Natasha was doing alright, and that they would find Josephine soon, and possibly unharmed, he slinked down the corridor, using the tiny IR camera installed on the wrist of his suit to check the doors. Just when he had passed the fifth door, each to no avail, he heard a door slide open. His body went rigid for the fraction of a second before he turned around to find a man staring at him with an ugly grin on his face. He seemed in his early forties, balding and with a scruffy beard. He was tall, about 6'4", broadly built, muscular. No problem.

"Look who is there," the man said and stepped in the middle of the hallway. "Captain America…"

Steve looked at him without saying a word, just taking the shield off his back and bringing it into the right position. If he let him do the talking, the man might slip and tell him where Josephine was. "Surprised you could not see us through the doors? It is not only on S.H.I.E.L.D. to use this sort of technology, you see. Here for the girl, are you? We were waiting for this. But it is too late, Captain America, too late. She is dead"

Steve knew that the man was lying. Still, he clenched his hands to fists and opened them up again. Still, it hurt. Still… He didn't say anything in return, just looked at the man expectantly.

"You will be with her soon enough, Captain America…", the man said menacingly. Other doors opened, both in front of Steve and behind him. More than twenty men, heavily armed, stepped into the hallway.


	16. August 6 - Natasha

**16 – August 6**

She held her breath. Natasha usually preferred to work on her own, without having to watch out for other people's back. Sure, Steve could take care of himself – who else, if not him? But Jo? She preferred working alone, without feeling she had to take care of someone, even if this was exactly what she had to do right now. Her back pressed on the wall, she made her way down the corridor, pausing in front of every single door. There she listened hard before she pulled the doors open, gun drawn, ready to shoot, hoping to find something. A trace, evidence, a secret room. Anything at all. Five doors on, she was still alone. It was weird – where were they? They couldn't all be hiding from her, could they?

She paused in front of the next door. She listened – again, only silence. Natasha pushed the door open – again, an empty room. A naked lightbulb was hanging from the ceiling, flickering occasionally. The table in the middle of the room was thrown over. A tiny barred window was in the wall, about six feet above ground.

She felt his presence before she heard him. Turning around, Natasha saw how the man closed the door behind himself, his gun pointing at her, his face distorted into a menacing grin.

Natasha was not surprised, quite the contrary. She had been waiting for this to happen, had not only been expecting it but much rather provoking this by the way she had entered every single room instead of securing it from the doorframe. She had a plan, after all.

"Hands in the air and drop the gun," the man said.

She did as she was told.

"The famous Black Widow in our modest home, what an honour" He didn't sound honored at all.

"I see my reputation has gotten here ahead of me," she replied slowly.

"Can you think of a place where you can get before your reputation does?"

She smiled in response, saying nothing.

"I know what you are here for, Black Widow," he started again. "But it's too late. She won't survive this night."

Natasha shrugged. "People die every day," she said. "I'm just here to mop up the remains. I never said I needed her alive. It's her body S.H.I.E.L.D. wants, not her useless mind."

The man raised an eyebrow. "Even I did not think S.H.I.E.L.D. to be so cruel."

"I lie and kill, in the service of liars and killers," Natasha replied. "My line of work is not very different from what I did before I joined them."

The man laughed cruelly. This split second of negligence was the moment she had been waiting for. She grabbed her left wrist with her right hand, drawing the small knife from her suit, ducked the shot he fired and had crossed the floor between them before he could realize that things were different now. She kicked him off his feet and twisted his arms, pressed her knees in his back. She grabbed his hair, pulling his head back forcefully and held the knife to his throat.

"You have two choices," she said menacingly. "You tell me where she is, and I make it quick and painless. Or you don't tell me, and I can promise you that this is going to hurt." She pushed the knife harder on his throat and tiny beads of blood appeared on the blade.

She left the room a minute later. _The end of the floor_ , he had said, shaking like a little girl.

Her gun drawn, she went past around the corner. A man was lying there, out cold. Natasha raised an eyebrow, seeing another man in a sitting position, but clearly unconscious as well. Next to each of them, a rifle was lying on the floor, and next to one of them, a bloodied knife. She heard noises from a room to the left and sneaked up on it, making sure there was no one outside the room to attack when she wasn't looking.

She kicked the door open, scanned the scene and pulled the trigger.


	17. August 6 - Jo

**17 – August 6**

Darkness started to wash over her. It was a soothing darkness, a sweet one. It was welcome.

A splitting pain tore her out of it and back to the present, somewhere in a small and dark room.

She was still there. Her arms bound over her head, on a piece of rope that dangled from the ceiling, forcing her into a standing position.

"Do not dare to fall asleep," the man said in a hard accent.

Like they would let her. She hadn't slept in what felt like weeks, but was more likely to be days. Jo stared at him – it took her several seconds to focus properly on the man and the other two, standing in the back of the room. She felt the crusted blood on her right temple, felt each and every bruise on her body, every cut and every burn. The injuries were minor, but they added up.

"Where is it?" he asked again.

"I told you, I do not know," She had told them so for at least a hundred times already, but they did not believe her.

"Tell us, you goddamn whore!"

She said nothing. Every movement hurt.

"It does not matter," the man said again. "We will contact S.H.I.E.L.D. within the next hour, and if they want you back, they will give us the information we want"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't negotiate, you moron," she said, breathing heavily.

"Then you won't survive this night, bitch." He laughed complacently when one of the man in the back pulled on the rope, forcing her up again. She winced in pain. The man came closer, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look him in the eyes.

"Why don't you just kill me right away, and save us the hassle?" Jo spat.

A distant explosion made her cringe. The men looked alert. He let go of her. "Intruders," he said quietly. "Suarez, you come with me. Barajew, stay with her. Do whatever you must." The two stormed out of the room, and Jo heard him shout a word in a language she didn't understand, but she knew meant he required an internal lockdown.

She tried to concentrate on her breathing, her toes hardly reaching the ground. When she looked up, she saw Barajew standing barely three feet away from her now, a knife drawn.

"I was wondering how long they would continue to interrogate you," he said casually. She couldn't place his accent. According to his name, it should have been Slavic, but he didn't sound like it. "I became bored with it after a mere hour," he continued. He looked at his knife, then back at her. "I know you cannot give us what we need. But why shouldn't we have some… fun… before we dispose of you?" He drew closer.

It was her only chance. When he had closed in the distance until about a foot, she jumped up with all the force she could muster, wrapped her legs around his neck and pushed them together as hard as she could, cutting off the blood flow to the brain. He stared at her in surprise, but only for a second, before he started to wind and flung his arms in a panic. He hit her leg with his knife, but she tried to ignore the pain as good as she could.

Two more seconds.

One more second.

His eyes turned to the back of his head until she could only see the white of them and he sagged away. Jo had no idea how long he would stay unconscious. She tried pulling her hands out of the rope. It was a tough job and painful to do and must have cost her at least two precious minutes, but luckily the knot had loosened over the last few hours. She pulled her hands, cut and bloodied, out and landed hard on the floor. She lay there until her heartbeat slowed down, then got up slowly and insecure and felt on the back of her leg for the cut. The wound wasn't deep, thank god. Her injured leg carried her weight and took the knife from the lifeless man. The soles of her feet were rough and every step hurt, but she had to try to get out of here. The man had said something about a lockdown – she would have to look for a computer to get out of there.

Jo dragged herself to the door, which was ajar. Her shaking hands grabbed the steel doorframe, holding her upright. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. Breathing in, breathing out, again and again, just how she had been taught at S.H.I.E.L.D.

Jo opened her eyes again. She walked out of the door and into the corridor, closing the door behind her. She walked slowly, along the wall and risked taking a look around the corner. Two men were standing in front of a door to her right. She thought about it for a moment. Why were they standing there, and how could she get past them?

She couldn't get past them, not unnoticed, everything else was wishful thinking. And going back wasn't an option, it was a dead end. She sighed and looked at the knife in her hand. This was not going to be pretty. She turned the knife in her hands. She needed this to work, despite being such a bad shot. Looking around the corner, she took aim and threw the knife at the man standing on the far side of the floor. She didn't hit her aim, but at least she hit his hand and made him drop his rifle. He yelled out in pain, and she used the moment the second guard looked at the other one to find out what was going on. She ran towards him, let herself fall to the floor and kicked him off his feet. Before he even knew what was going on, she rammed her knee against his head. He lost consciousness right away and remained lying on the floor while she got up again. Of course, the other one had seen her by now and was reaching for his rifle. She couldn't let this happen. Fastly, she ran the short distance to the second guard, tore the rifle out of his hands and hit him hard on the head with it. The stumbled a few steps, crashed against the wall and slid down on it. He was also out cold and blood was flowing over his face from an ugly laceration.

Her heart was beating much too fast, her body releasing massive amounts of adrenalin, but this was good. It numbed out the pain. It helped her think clearer. Jo put the gun down again. It was useless to her anyway.

The guards had been here for a reason. She looked at the half open door which the two had been guarding. Jo slowly opened the door and saw what she hadn't dared to hope for. This was the CC of the building – she could stop the lockdown and try to get out.

She entered the room, drawing the door closed behind her, rushing to the monitor closest to the door.

"Tamila, Tamila. I thought you were a bit smarter than that."

She stopped dead, and slowly turned around again. The man was standing in the middle of the room, between her and the door – wherever he came from, she did not know.

"My name is not Tamila," she replied slowly.

The man chuckled. She hadn't seen him before, but then she had seen hardly anybody since she was here, except for the three men torturing her in the dark room. He had dark hair with many grey strains and cold eyes, maybe in his late forties. He was casually holding a gun in his right hand. "Of course it is," he said evenly. "You just need to remember, Tamila. And you will."

She made her decision in the fraction of a second, grabbing the nearest device she could find and throwing it at him. The bottle hit his shoulder, not nearly as hard as she would have wished it would, but he still dropped gun. He screamed out in pain and stared first at his hand and then at her, his eyes full of cold hate, his features distorted into an ugly grimace. "Stupid little girl," he snarled and drew closer. Slowly, but it was all the more intimidating. Jo could feel her heart hammer against her ribcage, fit to burst.

He raised his fist, ready to strike the first blow. She parried it with her bare arms. It hurt, but he seemed surprised enough so she could grab another utensil from the desk next to her and hit it on his head. It didn't achieve the desired effect and he aimed a kick for her hips and hit her hard. She groaned in pain, but remained on her feet, planting her fist in his side.

White-hot pain spread from her upper abdomen. She gasped, looking down on her and saw a knife protruding from her body, the man gripping the handle tightly, an evil grin on his face.

Shots were fired, and the man fell down in a crumpled heap.


	18. August 6 - Natasha (2)

**18 – August 6**

Natasha swore and ran into the room.

Jo was standing there, motionless, blood flowing from the stab wound in her abdomen which she had covered with her hand. Natasha grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. "Jo? Come on!"

Jo looked up slowly. She was pale, her mouth slightly open, breathing hard. Crusted blood was on her right temple, the bruises on her body standing out prominently against the pale skin. "Natasha?" She shook her head. "But what are you doing here?"

"What I'm doing here? Getting you out, of course. Come on, we need to get you away from here!"

"We can't just get out, Natasha," Jo said and moved away from Natasha to the monitor on the desk. "They initiated a lockdown of the place, we can't just get out. Are you alone?"

"No, Steve is on the upper level"

Jo closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Natasha turned around, holding her wrist to her mouth. "Cap, where are you?"

Steve's voice sounded strained. "Bit busy right now," he panted.

"Steve, I got her."

For a few seconds, she only heard the sound of a fight going on. "How is she?"

Natasha looked back to Jo, who was working on the keyboard with only one hand, trying to cancel the lockdown. The filthy white shirt she was wearing was steadily turning a bright red around the wound. "You better hurry," she said then.

"Give me a minute."

"Tell him to get to the door, I can only open it for a short amount of time," Jo groaned.

"Get to the door, Steve. Quick. We'll meet you at the staircase."

Jo leaned on the wall, her breathing becoming ever more labored, and the red stain on her shirt becoming bigger by the second. Situations like this were responsible for Natasha's preference of working alone. She was standing in front of Jo, looking right at the metal door where she and Steve had split up earlier, her gun aiming at the bottom of the stairs.

"Why are we still alone?" Natasha turned around to Jo for a short second.

"They might have left," Jo groaned. "There was an explosion earlier, it might have alerted them and made them run."

"Let's just hope they don't show up now", Natasha said quietly and returned her attention back to the stairs when a man was thrown off the staircase, landing on the ground with a gut wrenching thud. Just as Natasha thought about shooting the man in the back, for good measure, Steve landed next to him. His suit was torn in several places, he had lost his helmet and blood trickled from his forehead down his temple, but otherwise he looked okay.

"Damn it," he cursed. "There were at least thirty of them, armed to the teeth."

"Later," Natasha said, beckoning to Jo. "We haven't got much time."

"Then what are we waiting for?"

"The doors are locked. Jo couldn't lift the lockdown for good, so it's up to you."

He didn't waste time and threw his shield towards the door. It rebounded as if he had hit it on a wall made of rubber and Steve caught it in midair. "Useless," he said. "There's something else there, not just a normal lockdown."

"Hawkeye?!" Natasha snapped into the communicator.

"Nat? Where the hell are you?"

"Behind the main entrance. We can't open the doors, there's an internal lockdown. We need to get out of here ASAP."

"Take cover." It was all he said, but Natasha understood it immediately.

"Behind that wall," she yelled and grabbed Jo's arm, dragging her with her, Steve making up the rear, covering their backs with his shield. Only seconds later, she felt the heat of an explosion and heard the door and the surrounding wall shatter.

"Nat, I called for air support. They'll be here in less than a minute."

"Okay, we'll meet you outside."

Natasha put her wrist down again. Steve was looking at her worriedly. Jo's eyes were closed, her right arm clutching her left side, bloodied, but at least she was still standing upright. Natasha wondered just how much longer she would last.

"Let's go," Natasha said. "We've got a glider coming to pick us up in less than a minute. Let's hope we'll stay alone until then."

The tiny glider, hardly bigger than her own car, was already there when they left the building, running as fast as they could with Jo, Hawkeye standing next to the open back ramp. Suddenly he drew his bow and shot an arrow past them, mere inches from Natasha's face. She turned around quickly and saw a man fall to the ground, a gun in his hand and an arrow in his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground.

They entered the aircraft through the back, with Hawkeye taking his seat next to the pilot and Natasha and Steve dragging Jo to the middle seat of the rear bench, Natasha taking the seat to her left and Steve to her right, the aircraft having taken off the second the ramp had closed.

"You said something about air support," Natasha said to Clint.

"The S.T.R.I.K.E. team is on their way," Clint answered. "They'll tear that branch apart."

"What about the flaks?"

Clint smirked. "You took your time in there, I needed something to do."

"Where are we going?" Jo's voice sounded strained as she opened her eyes again. Natasha turned to her – it didn't look too good. There was more red on her shirt than white, her breathing ragged, her face bloodless.

"We're going home", Steve said, with a forced smile on his face. Natasha noticed his hands shaking as he fastened Jo's seatbelt. She felt inside the hatch at the back of the pilot's seat, taking out a piece of cloth usually to be used as an arm sling.

"Here," Natasha said, handing Steve the piece of cloth. "You should put pressure on the wound. And keep her awake. Okay?"

He nodded, took the cloth out of her hands, pressing it on the gash on Jo's left side. She winced when he touched her, her body going rigid for a moment.

"I'm sorry, Josephine, I'm sorry," Steve whispered.

"It's okay… okay…" Jo whispered between two ragged breaths.

Natasha looked away again, biting her lip. "Where exactly are we going?" Natasha turned her attention back to the front row, asking the pilot.

"Director Fury wants you back on American ground," the pilot answered.

"How long?"

"The nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. branch is twenty-five minutes away, Agent Romanoff."

Twenty-five minutes? Natasha looked at Jo again. She was never going to make it for another twenty-five minutes, she was losing too much blood.

"The helicarrier is much nearer, it's stationed less than ten minutes away," Clint said. "It's got a fully equipped infirmary."

"Director Fury said it was first priority to get you on American ground."

"Fury's first priority is to get us there alive," Clint stated.

"But-"

She had the safety-catch released and the gun on the back of his head before he had finished the first word. "You'll either get us to the helicarrier within the next five minutes or you find yourself on the rocky Mexican desert floor with a bullet in your head and a kick in your ass before you know what's happening," she hissed threateningly.

"Helicarrier, five minutes," the pilot said quickly.

"Talking sense now, are we?" Clint turned around to the others, looking directly at Natasha. She didn't like it when he looked at her like this, that worried look on his face, when she felt like he could see right inside her. She looked away, biting her lip again. _People die every day_ , she had said. What a stupid thing to say.

With half an ear she heard the pilot contact the commander of the helicarrier. It must be Gibson in charge today, she thought. Gibson was good. Gibson wouldn't need… persuasion.

"Hey, stay with me, okay? Josephine? Come on, don't fall asleep, yeah?" Steve's frantic whispering pulled her attention back to the present.

"We shouldn't… go…" Jo mumbled, barely conscious.

"No, come on, just a few more minutes. Josephine, come on. You can't leave me alone, okay?"

Her head sagged to the side. Natasha immediately reached out to feel for a pulse. She looked down to find the piece of cloth she had given Steve to put on the wound dripping with blood. "She's still got a pulse. And she's breathing. We're almost at the helicarrier, Steve. It's going to be okay," she said soothingly when she saw Steve's worried face. She had never seen him like this before.

When the aircraft landed, Natasha first unbuckled Jo's seatbelt, then her own. She watched as Steve put his arms beneath Jo's legs and her back and lifted her up as if she weighed nothing, her head resting on his chest, her breathing flat and fitfully, but at least she was still breathing. They quickly left the aircraft through the back ramp where they were met by several paramedics, some of them holding on to a barrow. The wind was blowing strongly in the thin air.

Steve carefully laid Jo on the barrow and was pushed away by the attending medics, who rushed her inside through the heavy steel doors, not wasting time. They were standing there for a moment, feeling lost, staring after her.

"We should get inside," Clint said finally.

"This shouldn't have happened." Steve clenched his fists, his voice bitter.

"I know," Natasha told him. "But we got her out of there alive, nothing else matters right now." She laid her hand on his arm. He was shaking, but whether it was out of fear for Jo or out of anger, she didn't know. He shook off her hand and made for the doors without saying another word, punching his bare fist on the wall before he went through them. Natasha felt Clint's hand around her own, dragging her gently to the doors as well.

She found him in a deserted corridor near the CC, sitting on the floor with his legs drawn to his body and his arms resting on his knees, staring at the steel wall opposite.

"Let me see your hand," she demanded and sat down next to him. She took his right hand into hers. The skin was torn and the knuckles were bruised and seemed swollen. "Is it broken?"

He shook his head and pulled his hand out of hers.

"You're the winner. The wall looks a lot worse, Nick's going to freak out when he sees it," she said then, trying to make her voice sound light.

He chuckled, but became serious again quickly. "Sorry about outside," he said. His voice sounded weird. Way too controlled.

"No, don't. You were right. I was just talking to calm myself down."

He said nothing but kept staring at the steel wall. His eyes seemed clouded over.

"You should take a shower and get some fresh clothes," Natasha said. "You're covered in blood."

Steve just shook his head. "Any news?"

Natasha shrugged. "Jo receives the best treatment they can give her. Clints in the ward, but they wouldn't let us go any further. It's out of our power from now on. But she's made it to here, and that's something."

He sighed, still staring at the steel wall opposite them. "Agent Coulson died here," he said then.


	19. August 7

**19 – August 7**

There was a steady beeping sound in her ears. She could feel a pressure on her right thumb and a dull pain on her left side. Otherwise, her whole body felt numb.

Jo opened her eyes, slowly, carefully. It wasn't dark in the room, but also not bright; it was much rather a twilight situation, a weird mixture of bluish shades of grey. Her head was throbbing. Blinking several times to clear her head, she tried to see what else was in this room without having to move. Looking down on her right arm, she saw a weird device tagged on her thumb. She had seen these in movies, and if she remembered it right, they took the pulse. She looked around and saw a tiny sofa on the far wall. Somebody was lying on it, curled up under a blanket which had fallen off the person's shoulders. Jo could see a shock of red hair – Natasha. She had never imagined to one day see Natasha sleeping.

Jo moved her head a little and was met with a harsh pain in her head. Small cables were coming out from under her hospital gown, leading to a device that showed a steady sinus curve. This must be her heart rate. Down her left arm, a needle was protruding from her forearm, an IV tube coming out of it. Her arms were covered with cuts and bruises.

Looking to her left, she saw a figure on a chair, in an awkward position, the head resting on the wall, fast asleep. It was Steve. His mobile was lying on his lap, emitting a dull light - it looked as though he had fallen asleep while he was reading.

The door opened up – it was an automatic one and it made a strange hissing sound when it opened and closed only seconds later. She moved her head to look at the door and got another throbbing pain in her head as a result. Another man came in, holding a mug in his hands. She couldn't quite see him in the dim light. She squinted, and heard him chuckle.

"Awake, are we?" It was Clint. So he had earned his nickname for a reason. He pulled the blanket over Natasha's shoulders and then came closer to the bed. There was a gentle smile on his face. "You got us worried there, Josie."

"Was that a new nickname?" She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Breathing hurt, despite her body feeling numb all over. She opened her eyes again to see Clint shrug.

"Thought I'd try something new for a change, but it doesn't really suit you." He smiled again. Jo had always liked Clint's smile. It was genuine, and he didn't use it too often, so she was sure that when he smiled, he wasn't doing it just to make her feel better. "How do you feel?"

"Wretched," She wanted to go back to sleep, but there were things she needed to know first. "Where are we?"

Clint placed his mug on a table beside her bed, drew a chair to the bed, making not the tiniest sound, turned it around and sat down on it, leaning his arms on the backrest. "Ever heard of the helicarrier?" Clint asked, looking her straight in the eyes.

"Steve told me about it."

Clint looked over to Steve. He hadn't moved at all since he had entered the room. "Of course he did," Clint observed. "He was still awake half an hour ago, you know? Must be pretty wiped out, falling asleep with the mobile still in his hands."

It made her feel even worse. They were here only because of her, sleeping in hard chairs and on uncomfortable sofas, having risked their lives just because of her. She swallowed.

"Anyhow, they're going to get you to D.C. tomorrow if you're stable. Guess Nat and the Captain won't object to that."

"How long," she asked quickly, just to change topics. She saw Clint raise an eyebrow in the dim light.

"Ten hours, more or less. They wheeled you out of the OR four hours ago, you've been asleep ever since. It was a close call, to tell you the truth. We weren't sure you were going to make it for a while, you lost just so much blood. But doctors say you were lucky. Your spleen was injured, but they could save even that. They say you'll be fine, probably sooner than we all think right now."

She laughed briefly, but stopped soon enough because it hurt too much. "So that's what being lucky feels like," she said. Her voice was turning hoarse. "How long did they… have… me?"

His smile was wry. "Three days, we think. Four, max, but rather three. You vanished in El Salvador on your way to a contact, during a street riot. Remember any of this?"

She shook her head, but only slightly. Yet again it felt like someone was poking in her brain with a knife. "I remember going away from my flat, and then waking up in their… lair."

Clint chuckled. "Lair…," he said. "I haven't heard that word in a long time. Remember anything they did to you?"

She swallowed hard. "Beating me up. Electroshocks. Sleep deprivation. It was basically your good old torture 101," she said flatly.

Clint smiled weakly. "I was afraid I'd hear something like that," he said then. "Looking at you gave enough clues already, being honest. You're a wreck"

Jo snorted. "Yeah," she said bitterly. "They did the reading all right."

"What did they want?"

She thought for a moment. "I don't know," she answered quietly. "They wanted S.H.I.E.L.D. internals I couldn't possibly know about…"

They sat there in silence for a few moments, only the steady beeping of the monitors could be heard. Nobody said a word. Jo closed her eyes again and breathed in deeply. It still hurt, but she didn't let it show.

"You should try and get some more sleep," Clint observed.

She nodded, keeping her eyes closed. "Could you do me a favor and wake Steve up? His neck is going to kill him in the morning, the way he's hanging on the chair."

"I'll try, okay? But once he's asleep…" She could almost see the smile on Clint's face. Amused, but genuine. She felt his hand on her forehead, gentle despite his callused fingertips, pushing the hair out of her face. "You're cold," he observed.

Jo nodded again. "I know," she answered. She heard a soft thud and a shuffle.

"It's okay, I'm awake," Steve murmured. "Where's the phone?"

"You dropped it, genius," Clint stated dryly. "I'm going to leave the two of you alone, but don't make it too long, alright?"

"What do you mean?"

Jo opened her eyes to see a thoroughly confused Steve staring after Clint as the latter left the room. "You really got me out of there," she said quietly and tried to smile.

"Josephine?" It was barely more than a whisper. "You're awake…"

"Welcome back, Captain Obvious," she said, trying to sound sarcastic. She failed miserably. "What time is it?"

He fumbled for his watch. "Past midnight," he said. "Clint was right, you should get back to sleep."

Like she hadn't been sleeping over the last hours."Steve? Thank you. For… basically everything." The last words were barely more than an undistinguishable murmur. She didn't hear what he said in return, just saw the smile in his eyes as she closed her eyes again and let the darkness surround her.


	20. August 19

**20 - August 19**

She leaned on the wall next to the door to her apartment, taking a deep breath while she was searching her pockets for her new ID-card. Her old one had been devaluated by S.H.I.E.L.D. the moment she had vanished in El Salvador as a precaution. She had gotten a new one today when she had left the hospital.

It had been almost two weeks since Steve, Natasha and Clint had saved her in the Mexican plateau.

"I still think it's too early," Steve said suddenly.

"Yeah, you said so about a hundred times since we left the hospital." Jo smirked and, having finally found the ID in her pockets, took it out and swiped it through the reader. She heard the familiar clicking sound and pushed the door open. "Anyway, I'm to check in with the doctors twice a week over the next fortnight."

Finally.

She went into the flat and looked around herself in the familiar surroundings. Even though it was a sad picture to see the shriveled flowers on the shelves, it was still home.

She went straight to the sofa and sat down on it, took a pillow and pressed it on to her body. She heard how Steve closed the door and watched him coming closer to the sofa until he sat down on the armchair, placing his elbows on his knees and folding his hands, looking her straight in the eyes. "How do you feel?"

"Alright," she said, but her shaking voice was giving her away.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

Jo shrugged. "Wretched," she said then, quietly.

"Did you sleep at all tonight?"

She said nothing at first. "An hour, maybe two," she admitted then.

He sighed. "Think it's going to be better when you're at home?"

She shrugged again, letting go of the pillow and placing it on the couch next to her. "I hope. It's just… in the hospital, there were all these noises at night. The beeping of the monitors, and people walking the hallways outside. And when the noises were gone, it was just much too quiet, and I heard the… other noises… in my head. Of them."

"Torturing you," he added.

"Torturing me," she agreed weakly. "Yes."

He sighed again and for a moment she thought that he made to touch her, but he withdrew his hand again in almost the same moment. "This shouldn't have happened," he said then. Quiet. Serious.

"I know. You said so, very, very often" A slight smile crept on her face that he replied for only about a second.

"Listen, I should go now. I need to stop over at the Triskelion."

She nodded.

They stood up and went to the door, Jo opening it for him.

"Could you," she started, not really knowing how to put it. "I mean, it's just that…"

"Come over tonight? Sure, if you want me to," he said.

"I'd really like you to come, yes," she answered when he left the flat.

Maybe, she thought when she closed the door behind him, just maybe she'd feel save enough to sleep when he'd be there. She leaned on the door and slid down on it, staring at her empty, dead flat, with the shriveled plants and the dusty surfaces. Jo drew her legs close to her body, ignoring the stinging pain this position caused, and slung her arms around her knees. She looked at her arms, still in various shades of purple and green, with the barely healed cuts, as if they were the arms of a stranger. She laid her head on her knees, closing her eyes, trying to drown out the sounds in her head.

"You're quiet tonight," she observed, when a few hours later Steve took the last slice of pizza and leaned back on the chair at the small kitchen table.

"That's because I'm eating," he answered a few moments later.

Jo smiled in return, taking her glass, but not drinking from the coke in it. Instead, she held the cool glass in her hands, occasionally swirling the drink in the barely half-filled glass. "You're not eating all the time, you know?"

He shrugged and took another bite. "You barely ate anything, someone's got to finish."

"We were sitting here like this almost a year ago," she said suddenly.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the two of us, here at the kitchen table. You ate the last slice of the pizza. I had just moved in here, right after I was released from the hospital. Just like now, more or less."

He smiled wryly. "Don't let it become a habit," he said. "Having pizza, sure, yeah, all the time. But not the thing about the hospital."

"I'm going to try," she said and tried to make her voice sound light.

"And you?" He looked at her expectantly.

"What about me?" She looked up, bewildered by his question. "What do you mean?"

"What did you do all day?"

"Oh," she said and put the glass back on the table. "Nothing much. Cleaned the flat, went shopping – see the new flowers I got? Let's hope I don't drown them this time, I was doing so well with the others"

"Sure you're not overcompensating?" His smile was wry.

Jo shrugged. "I don't know," she answered. "I'm trying to not think about it too much, being honest. I'm just… desperate for a distraction. Or anything that feels like one."

Steve sighed. "It's not like I don't understand," he said.

"I know," she said quickly before he could say anything else. "I know. I'll talk about it, sooner or later, I promise. Let's just… talk about something else for now, okay? Please?"

She hadn't talked about the days in Mexico in the hands of C.R.O.S.S. to anyone except for Clint, right after she woke up, and to Maria Hill. She had flat out refused to talk about it to Fury, and Natasha and Steve thankfully hadn't pressed her into talking about it, even though Jo was sure that Natasha knew everything she had told Clint.

"Sure. Yeah. Why not," Steve said. "What do you want to do next? Watch a movie?"

"Is there one we haven't watched already?" She smiled gratefully.

Panic.

Someone grabbed her hair with hard hands and pulled her head back. She could see the knife, its blade glinting in the artificial light, coming out of nothing, drawing closer to her throat. She didn't dare to breathe, fearing she would move too much and the blade would slice her skin open.

She could feel their hands on her body, beating her, turning her body into a wreck. She would be lying on the floor if they hadn't tied her hands, lifting her up with a rope.

She could see the bodies, lying on the ground, the graves dug into the cold earth.

She could feel the barrel on the back of her head.

"Josephine, wake up!"

She was wide awake in the fraction of a second, her heart drumming against her ribcage, the blood rushing in her ears, her pulse running. She found herself tangled in a blanket, lying on the sofa in her apartment's living room. Her body was covered in cold sweat. She was breathing way too fast. "What happened?"

"You had a nightmare" Steve pushed the sweaty hair out of her face. He crouched in front of the sofa and looked at her worriedly. "You fell asleep after Luke told Leia that she was his sister"

"Yeah, I remember that line somehow," Jo said and pulled the blanket off her body. She was shaking. "Did I… say something in my sleep?"

He opened the bottle, got up and held it out to her. "Nothing distinguishable, no. You should drink something."

She took the bottle and held it in her hands for a while before she took a sip and closed it again. Then she slid from the sofa to the floor, leaning on the sofa, lying her head on the seating and stretching out her legs. "So nothing, right?" She looked at him.

"Nothing, like I said," he replied and sat down next to her on the wooden floor. "What did you dream about?"

"Everything," she whispered. "Nothing. I don't know" She put the bottle on the floor between her and Steve and stared at the label. "I was back again. There. In Mexico. In that room" She took a deep breath. "In that goddamn room. I…"

"Josephine," he interrupted her. "You don't have to tell me."

"I know," she replied. "But I want to."

"Then go on." He didn't look her in the face, but was staring at the TV, where the last moments of _Return of the Jedi_ were shown.

"They…" Jo hesitated. If she told him now, it would finally become true. Once more she took a deep breath. "They didn't let me sleep," she continued in a flat, emotionless voice. "They bound me up, tied my hands with a rope hanging from the ceiling. Whenever I fell asleep, they beat me up, they burnt me with their cigarettes. When this didn't help…" Again she hesitated. He didn't say a word, but continued to look at the TV, but she was almost sure he didn't see the pictures. She took the bottle again, her hands shaking hard. "When this didn't help, they used electric shocks. I don't remember how often they used them, I really don't. They threatened to kill me whenever I told them I didn't know anything about the secrets they wanted. Held a knife to my throat countless times, to stay with the nicer ones" She swallowed hard and started to peel the label off the bottle. "I was sure they were…" She stopped.

"I know," Steve said, still staring at the TV. He had gone pale and his hands were clenched to fists.

"I was sure I was going to die there," she whispered. "And then Natasha was there all of a sudden. And you"

"I thought I'd lost you when you passed out in the glider," he replied.

She nodded and closed her eyes for a second, only to see the graves again.

But she had never seen anything but the dark room in Mexico… She tore the label off the bottle in one go, crumpling the paper in one hand. "Steve," she said then. "I think I remember something."

She was staring at the TV now as well. It was one of those DVDs that restarted automatically after a while, and Luke and Leia were trying to save Han Solo right now. "I saw graves. Many of them. Small graves, and bigger ones as well. And so many bodies." Her voice was shaking now. "They were just children, but they killed them all, and I was watching it, and then there was the barrel on the back of my head, I could feel it just now, when I was sleeping. I don't know what I did, I can't remember anything else, but they were just children."

She was breathing fast, much too fast, still crumpling the paper to something unrecognizable in her hand.

"Hey," Steve said and his voice was quiet, but firm. Suddenly, he was there his hands placed on her shoulders, holding her, but she didn't really notice him. "Hey, Josephine, it's alright, you're here, you are safe."

She was still shaking. "No," she whispered. "No, I saw it, I saw what they're doing, no…"

"Josephine, listen to me." He drew her closer and forced her to look at him. "It is okay, they can't get you here, okay?" He let go of her shoulders and his hands slowly glided down her arms, making her naked skin prickle wherever he touched her.

She looked into his worried eyes for the fraction of a second before she overcame the last few inches between them and pressed her lips on his. She drew her body closer to his and she felt his hands on her waist. He responded to the kiss, but only for a second or two before he placed his hands back on her shoulders and pushed her away, carefully, but determinedly.

"I'm sorry," Jo whispered when she realized what she had done. She got up hurriedly and stumbled a few steps away from him. "I'm so sorry."

"No, don't," he said as he stood up as well. "Don't be sorry, it's okay."

"But then…"

"Josephine," he interrupted her. "This is not about what I want, this is about me not taking advantage of your situation. What happened to you is horrible, okay? It's only natural for you to-"

"Freak out?" She snorted. Bitterly.

"That's not what I'm saying," he replied calmly.

Jo looked away, concentrated on the floor behind him. A lonely cobweb fluttered in a corner. "I'm broken," she said then. "They… broke something inside of me."

"No, they didn't," he replied. He stepped closer to her, slung his arms around her and drew her into a hug. She laid her head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. His hands stroke her hair and he told her, again and again, how everything would be fine. She wanted nothing more than believe him.


	21. August 20

She woke up in her bed the morning after, tangled in the sheets, still dressed in yesterday's jeans and sweater. She looked around herself, the room bright with sunlight, but she was alone.

Slowly she got up, carefully untangling her legs from the sheets, with a dull throbbing pain in her head. She sat at the edge of the bed, her feet placed firmly on the ground to stop the world spinning around her, hoping that the world would stop spinning around her. She put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, massaging her temples with her eyes closed. Pictures pattered in on her, and she was sure that those weren't dreams, but memories.

When she finally found the courage to get up and go to the bathroom, she looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were red, her face blotchy, as if she had been crying all night. She probably had.

She opened the tap and splashed icy cold water in her face before she undressed and had a similarly cold shower. She got dressed again, brushed her teeth and went to the living room, where she found a small note from Steve on the kitchen table, telling her he had to go to S.H.I.E.L.D., saying he hoped she had slept well and that he would be glad if she would come to the Triskelion later as well, if she could manage it.

She had been setting up things to brew coffee while reading the note and now sat down on a chair, waiting for the coffee to be done.

 _If you can manage it_.

That line stuck in her head. What did he mean by it?

Of course she knew what he meant by it. When she had returned from shopping yesterday she had nearly suffered from a panic attack and had locked herself in the bathroom for almost twenty minutes before she had felt safe enough to get out again.

She got up again and poured herself a cup of coffee, put sugar into it, lots of sugar, too much sugar, and went to the sofa, where she turned on the TV, just for the background noise. She sat down on the sofa, cradling the warm mug in her cold hands and only occasionally drinking from the steaming coffee in it.

It took her almost an hour to empty the cup. In the end, it had been cold and disgustingly sweet.

It was well past noon when she was standing at the door, her hand on the doorknob, but couldn't bring up the courage to open the door. Jo leaned on the wall, one hand still grabbing the doorknob, the other one clenched to a fist. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. You can't spend the rest of your life locked in a flat, she thought to herself. And she ignored the tiny voice in the back of her head asking why not.

Jo stood in front of the Triskelion, her whole body shaking, her hands clenching the strap of her bag. Despite the warm weather and despite the sweater she was wearing, she felt cold.

She stared up at the building, trying to figure out where exactly Fury's office was. She didn't know how long she'd been standing there when suddenly she heard a familiar voice behind her.

"Jo?!"

She whirled around, startled, taking two steps back before she realized who had been addressing her. "Agent Wright?" She relaxed a little, but wrapped her arms around her chest.

"Why don't you call me Isaac?" She hadn't seen him for at least half a year, and only ever in passing. She hadn't talked to him since the day he had picked her up from the hospital.

"Isaac, then," she said.

"I heard what happened to you," he went on. "How are you? I'm amazed you're here already, after everything…"

"Yeah," she said. "I don't really know myself either"

He smiled. "I understand," he gave back.

"I… yeah," she answered. "Can't really bring myself to go in"

He smiled in return. "I see," he said.

"It's just… I'm afraid they won't let me in" She had said it before she could have stopped herself from doing so. She hadn't wanted to say it, not really.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. That my data is erased, or whatever. Last time I was here with Steve… Captain Rogers… but now I'm on my own and it feels… I don't know, wrong."

For a while, he said nothing. They just stood there in front of the huge building made of steel, concrete and glass, people passing them without taking notice.

"Nobody erased your data," he said then. "We didn't give up on you, if that's what you're afraid of"

"No," she said quickly. "I never thought that. It's just…"

"Weird. Intimidating," he finished her sentence. "I know"

She smiled weakly. "Thanks," she said then.

"Anyway," he replied, checking his watch. "I gotta go, I'm running late. Good luck with, well, everything. Bye, Jo."

"Bye, Agent Wright… ahm, Isaac," she said when he turned around to go. He waved, and then vanished in the crowd. She just stood there, her arms slung around herself, and looked up at the building once more.

"And he really did that?"

Steve, Natasha and Clint were sitting around a table in the room in the seventh floor, mugs placed on the table in front of them.

"Yeah," Clint said. "He must have thought it to be pretty funny"

Jo knocked on the doorframe and the others looked up.

"Josephine," Steve said. "You came."

"Yeah, I did," she replied. "Ahm… Fury told me where you were. I just-"

"Why don't you come in and sit down?" Clint drew out the chair beside him and, though reluctantly, she entered the room and sat down, placing her bag on the floor next to her chair.

"What did you and Fury talk about?" Natasha asked.

"I reported back at work," Jo said, kneading her hands nervously. "Was about time, wasn't it?"

"Are you sure?" Clint cocked his head to the left, looking at her expectantly. "It's barely been two weeks, you sure you're fit enough already?"

Jo shrugged. "I won't start with the training for another two weeks at least," she said then. "I'm not supposed to move to much. But I can't be stuck in the apartment for that much longer, I'll freak out if I have to stay there."

"So he said yes?" Steve sounded doubtful.

"Well, he wasn't exactly thrilled about it," Jo admitted. "But he agreed to have me back at work from next week on. I could try to figure out the data the S.T.R.I.K.E. team extracted from Durango. It's fictional languages again, and Fury doesn't seem to have someone else at hand who speaks them." She shrugged. "It gives me something to do, anyway."

"You should start teaching the nerds in IT," Natasha said teasingly, but Jo waved her comment aside.

"How do you feel, Jo?" It was Clint. He looked at her and his worried voice found a match in his face.

"Alright," she lied, too quickly. She didn't know why she didn't just tell them the truth, but maybe there was a chance she herself would believe her lie. But when Clint raised an eyebrow at her, she gave in immediately. "Wretched," she said then. "Not… physically. But otherwise"

After that, she told Clint and Natasha about her nightmares. Of the dead children, lying on the frozen ground, of the endless number of graves, dug into the cold earth. And about the dreams she had last night. Of the fear she had felt and the strange places. "I think I speak Mandarin," she finished. "At least I think I know a lot of swear words."

Natasha chuckled. "Well, that might come in handy one day," she said jokingly. "Just imagine you have to appear on TV and want to insult someone really badly."

Jo rolled her eyes.

"Did you tell Fury about all this?" Steve leaned back on his chair, crossing his arms behind his head.

"Most of it," she answered. "Everything that's important, of course." She hadn't mentioned the barrel on the back of her head, but then she hadn't told Natasha and Clint about it either. "He wasn't sure what to make of it, but he said that all my memories could be coming back."

"That's good," Natasha said.

"Is it?" Jo replied doubtfully. "I'm not too sure I want to know what they did to me." She broke off. "The… shreds an pieces I get are enough."

"Pick the raisins, just for once," Clint suggested. "Take what you learned – fighting, languages, skills, whatever. Forget the rest, or at least ignore it" He smiled at her and she couldn't help but smile back.

"I might," she answered and picked up her bag. "I think I should go now."

"I'll see you out," Steve volunteered. She took his offer gratefully.

"You're not feeling well, aren't you?" Steve looked at her worriedly when they left the Triskelion.

"It was… a lot… for today," she answered reluctantly, her hands in her pockets. "I think I'll go home and lie down. Or watch a movie, I don't know…"

"Good idea," he said.

"Ahm, Steve, about yesterday… how long-"

"You fell asleep around two in the morning," he interrupted her. "I slept on the sofa, just in case you'd have… another nightmare. Hope that was alright?"

"Of course it was," she replied surprisedly. "Thank you."

"Think you're gonna deal?"

She smiled involuntarily. "Somehow," she said then. "Fury said I should go and see a therapist. In two weeks, he said I'd be ready then."

"You didn't say anything about it upstairs."

Jo shrugged. "I don't know why I didn't," she said then, shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Steve looked at her. "Not for this."

Jo breathed in deeply, but didn't say anything.

"Want me to take you home? You're pale." He looked worried, like he always did, but Jo shook her head.

"It's okay," she replied. "I… I can do this. But thanks. Really."


	22. September 5

**22\. September 5**

„I can do this," Jo said, mostly to herself. "I can do this," she repeated, whispering. I can do this, she thought, going up and down the hallway.

"You alright?" Natasha's voice tore her back to reality. Jo whirled around and found Natasha looking at her expectantly.

"Did you plant a signal on me or why do you always show up when I'm alone?"

"What can you do?" Natasha grinned, utterly ignoring her question.

"Nothing," Jo said quickly.

"You know what?" Natasha's grin became broader. "You and Steve, you're both terrible liars"

Jo sighed. "Go there," she admitted. "I can go there. At least I hope that I can"

"Go where?" Natasha asked. "Oh, you mean Hernandez?"

Jo simply nodded. She dreaded going to the obligatory first meeting with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own psychiatrist. He would make her relive everything about Mexico again, she was sure about this. And she dreaded having to repeat every single detail of… everything.

"You needn't worry there," Natasha said. "Hernandez is good"

"How do you know?"

"They made me go there before I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. for good," she answered. "And then again after what happened in Budapest"

"What happened in Budapest?"

Natasha smiled. "That's a secret," she said.

Jo never knew what to make of Natasha's smile. It was different to Clint's, as his was rare, but always genuine. And Natasha's… could be anything at all.

"And not after New York?" she asked instead of digging deeper.

"No, not after New York," Natasha answered. "All this Avengers Initiative business, and what with demigods and aliens, monsters and magic… it's not really his cup of tea"

"Natasha," Jo said quietly. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot"

"How do you… cope?" She had wanted to ask her for so long, but had never found the courage to do so before.

"Cope? With what?"

"Well… basically with everything," Jo answered.

Natasha smiled sympathetically. "I just do," she said. "But I wouldn't recommend that to you. You're just too much of a different person"

Jo shrugged. "I thought so," she replied. "It's just that I have no idea how to… cope. Or whatever. It's just… kind of a lot at the moment."

Natasha cocked her head to the side and just looked at her for several, long seconds. Then she sighed and patted Jo's shoulder. "You'll be fine," she said. "Just… make sure you have someone you can rely on."

Jo took a deep breath. "Do you?" She asked then. "Have someone, I mean?"

Again, Natasha said nothing for a while. "I have Clint," she answered then. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him."

Jo wanted to ask Natasha what she meant by this, but she knew better than to press Natasha into telling her something she didn't want to tell, so she said nothing and just nodded.

"You've got Steve, though," Natasha observed.

"I don't know" Jo shrugged. "Do I really? Or does he simply feel… responsible? For whatever reason, really…"

Natasha shook her head. "What a stupid thing to say, Jo, really. You're the only one he's got. You should go now, I'd say. Believe me, it's only half as bad as you think."

"Do you really cope, just like that?" The question had just slipped out, she hadn't really wanted to ask again.

But Natasha merely smiled ambiguously, like she did so often, and left without another word.

Jo looked after her until Natasha vanished around a corner and then she slung her arms around herself. _The only one he's got._ It didn't make her feel better at all, only worse, if anything.

Her palms were sweaty and her knees had gone all wobbly. It was getting serious now. She went to the third door on the right, reading the brass sign on the wall again, even though she already knew it by heart. Once again, she took a deep breath and exhaled, rubbed her hands on her jeans, then she knocked.

She had entered the room upon a friendly _Come in_ and closed the door behind herself again. She found herself face to face with an elderly man with tanned skin and a shock of grayish hair. He sat behind an old wooden desk and gestured towards the leather chair in front of it. There was no red sofa in the room, she noticed with relief, only the leather chair in front of the desk and one behind it. And a giant, antique globe, whatever this was doing here. All the furniture didn't really fit to what she knew of the Triskelion by now, but that was good.

She sat down on the chair, her hands in her lap, and looked him in the eye.

"Agent Marlow, I take it?" His accent sounded like Oxford, maybe even Cambridge. Not American. He looked at her with a mild interest she thought was worrying.

"Yes," she answered and rubbed her cold fingers.

"Can you tell me why you are here today?"

Jo squinted. "Are you kidding me?" She exclaimed.

"Oh," he said with a smile on his face. "I do very well know why you are here. I just want to know what you think you are doing here."

"Well, I'm here because of what happened in El Salvador… and then in Mexico," she said slowly. Quietly. Her fingers clutched the fabric of her jeans.

"Then why don't you tell me what happened there?"

It was almost two hours later when she climbed the last set of stairs to her flat. It was getting colder every day, but she would probably be freezing even if it was warm outside.

She heard a shuffle behind the door when she passed Steve's apartment, so she took her time searching her pockets for her ID-card, just in case he came out. He really did, only seconds later, and seemed genuinely surprised to see her.

"Hey," he said. "I wasn't expecting you back for at least another hour. How was it?"

"Okay," she answered after a short pause. "Better than I thought. That guy is… weird."

He chuckled. "I heard that about him, yeah," he replied. "Did it help?"

"I have no idea," she said. "Let's just see whether Fury is satisfied with what he found. Or didn't find. I don't know. Anyway… you're going to see Peggy Carter today?"

He looked at her, taken aback. "How do you know?"

"It's Tuesday," she replied simply. "You go there every Tuesday."

He grinned. "Got me there," he said. "Yes, I am. Let's see how she is today."

"That's nice," Jo said and smiled. "And… well, just in case you want to do something afterwards… there's this little cinema downtown, they're showing a retrospective of 1940's Italian movies. You know, the kind you like so much, with subtitles. If you feel like it."

"I'll call you when I'm on my way," he said and smiled. "But promise me not to fall asleep this time."

She was already there when he called her. Nervously she waited for him in front of the old and rundown cinema she had suggested earlier, looking at her watch about every ten seconds.

She hadn't planned to be this early, not really. But the silence in her flat had been so loud and oppressing, not even the TV or her iPod had been able to drone it out, so she had left her flat a lot sooner than she had actually wanted to. Jo had already bought tickets for two movies they were showing, hoping Steve would be okay with her choice.

She smiled relieved when she saw him coming down the road. He must have parked his motorcycle some way down the street, since he was on foot, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. He took one hand out of the pockets and gave her a small wave when he realized she was waiting for him and fastened his pace.

"You're already here," he said when he stopped about half a yard from her.

"Says Captain Obvious," Jo grinned.

He said nothing to it, but he couldn't quite suppress a chuckle. "So," he started and looked around. "There's quite a many people here, isn't it?"

"Yeah, right," Jo said. "Looks like the Italian 1940's are up and coming…" She hesitated for a moment. "How's Peggy?" she asked then.

He smiled. "Good," he replied. "It was a good day today."

"I've already bought us some tickets," she added, took them out of her bag and handed them to Steve. "Hope I made the right choice?"

" _Four Steps in the Clouds_ ," Steve murmured, reading out the first title on the first ticket. He smiled. "That's the film I brought with me the first night you spent out of the hospital last year."

"Yeah," Jo agreed. "I thought I'd try it again, you said it was really good…"

He chuckled and looked at the second ticket. " _Short Circuit_ …" He squinted. "I think I've seen it, but I'm not sure…" He smiled again. "Let's just wait and see, right?"

"Right," she replied. "Fancy some popcorn? Or a drink? That Circuit-film is going to start in a few minutes, so we'd better hurry."

"Alright," Steve said. "What do you want?"

"No, let me do this. Okay? Please?"

"Sure," he said. But he was surprised, she could tell.

"So have you seen it already?" Jo asked about one and a half hours later when they left the auditorium along with about a hundred other people. Some small, round tables were standing there, and some singled out cinema seats were lined up on the far wall. The ceiling was mirrored and the floor was sticky with age and spilled soft drinks.

"Not sure," he said and made a vague gesture with his left hand.

"Did you like it?"

"Well," he grinned, placing his elbow on one of the tiny round tables scattered in the lobby. "It was good. The suspense was pretty intense. Don't you think?"

"I would have liked a happy ending, though," Jo told him, placing the bag with the rest of the popcorn on the table and the empty cup that had once contained Coke, into a trash bin.

"Yeah, well." Steve grinned. "Can't have everything, right? It wouldn't really have fit."

All of a sudden Jo realized that she had never seen him like this – utterly relaxed. Completely at ease. Almost… happy. She liked him like this, even more than she normally did.

"Josephine?"

"What?" She was torn out of her thoughts by his voice. "What's the matter? I'm sorry, I was just… somehow lost."

He smiled. "Nothing to worry about. I was asking how long we'd got until the next-" He was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone. "Ah, no…," he groaned, almost inaudibly, when he pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked on the display. "It's Natasha," he said.

"Go on," Jo said. "She doesn't like to wait."

"Just a second, okay?" He smiled weakly and turned away from the table, quickly leaving the lobby and going outside.

Steve came back less than a minute later. He looked crestfallen.

"What's the matter?" Jo asked even before he had reached her.

He shook his head slightly. "That's some serious case of bad timing," he said quietly.

"New mission?" She smiled, even though the realization somehow made her sad.

"Mhm," he made.

"Then what are you waiting for?"

Steve sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I really wish I could stay. That's certainly not going as I planned it."

Now it was Jo's turn to shake her head. "I think we're in the wrong business for anything to go as planned," she said slowly.

"Want me to take you home?" He looked at her and seemed genuinely sad.

"It's okay," she said. "I'll stay here."

"You'll watch _Four Steps_ for me?"

"I'll do my best to stay awake," she said and smiled.

"You'll get home safe?" He wasn't smiling when he asked this.

"Of course," she said. "I'll just grab a cab, I'll be fine. Now go, you know what Natasha is like if you let her wait."

He sighed again. "Alright," he said. "I'm really sorry about this. You take care, okay?"

"I was actually planning to walk around and ask some random stranger to murder me, but okay, I'll take care and be a good girl. And now go, or Natasha'll blame me for your lateness."

"Yeah," he said. "Right. But we'll do something like this again, and soon. Okay?"

"Sure," she agreed. "I'll make you watch _The Princess Bride_ from start to finish, I swear." She laughed briefly when Steve came over and pulled her into a hug that might have lasted a few seconds longer than necessary.

"You take care, okay?" He said again and when she agreed, again, he let go of her and walked out of the lobby and was lost in the crowd within just a few seconds.

She looked after him, and even found herself staring at the spot where he had vanished for several seconds. Natasha's words resounded in her ears. _You're the only one he's got_.

Jo sighed and pulled out the ticket for the next film, took the bag of popcorn and walked the short way to the auditorium where the movie was to be shown. _You're the only one he's got_. She shook her head. Well, she couldn't say anything about Steve, but it was an uncomfortable realization that it was pretty true the other way around.


	23. October 8 - Steve

„I'm telling you, she's different," Steve said and ran his hand through his hair. Natasha looked at him doubtfully and raised her eyebrows. "Seriously," he repeated firmly.

Natasha sighed, cocked her head to the left and looked at him pitifully.

"I'm not exaggerating, Natasha," he said.

"No, I'm sure you're not," Natasha gave back. "But we all changed after what happened in Mexico. Especially you, Steve, applying for advanced medics right after you got back. That's not exactly your field of work and you know that."

"That's not what I'm talking about."

Natasha just raised an eyebrow at him, but she didn't say a word.

"It's not what you're thinking," he said exasperatedly.

Natasha smiled benignly and drummed her fingers on the table, but remained silent.

"It is not," he said again. It really wasn't. Not right now.

"Steve, I think you're reading a little too much into all of this," she said finally.

"Reading?" Steve slammed his coffee mug back on the table with a little too much force, and the dark liquid swapped over the rim of the cup and spilled on the table, singing his fingers. He didn't even flinch. "What could I be reading anything into?"

"Maybe that she's just not that into you."

He let go of the mug and rubbed his hand dry on his jeans. "That's not what I'm talking about, Natasha."

Natasha tilted on her chair. "Are you sure?" She smiled sweetly. It was always worrying when she was smiling like this, and even more irritating.

"Yes, I am sure," he replied exasperatedly. "Josephine has changed in the last few weeks"

"Well," Natasha said simply. "She's traumatized, what do you expect?"

"Not this." He took a deep breath. "Not that she'd change so utterly, like she's a completely new person now. You don't change like this, Natasha, not like this and especially not that fast. She isn't even talking to me anymore."

"Maybe she's just angry that you blew off your date at the cinema."

"It wasn't a date. And don't you think I thought so, too? But that's not it. It's something else and I have no idea what it could be."

Natasha cocked her head to the other side and frowned at him. "What exactly do you mean?"

"I told you already. She's different. She's not talking anymore, she doesn't leave the apartment except for work-"

"That sounds like-"

"It's not PTSD, Natasha. I fought in a war, I know what that looks like, and it's not, at least not anymore. It's like she's remote-controlled" He grabbed his mug again and turned it around in his hands, staring at the still steaming coffee.

"Steve, really…"

"No, he's got a point there, Nat." Barton's voice startled him and again he spilled the coffee. This time he did flinch when his fingers were singed. Steve looked up, shaking his hand under the table, and looked at Barton, who was standing in the doorframe, his arms crossed in front of his chest as he entered the room and stopped next to Natasha. "Jo really did change a lot in the last few weeks," he went on. "But you've got to give us some more, Captain"

Steve sighed. He didn't like to be called _Captain_ when they weren't on a mission. Natasha had stopped doing so shortly after he had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and only ever did it to tease him, but to Barton it seemed to have become second nature.

"She's had nightmares when she came back," he said. "And regular flashbacks, both to what they did to her in Mexico and… and to what they did to her when she was still a child. I'd hear her wake up, screaming, in the middle of the night, almost every night. But suddenly it stopped, three or four weeks ago. I didn't think too much of it at first, I was glad for her to be honest. That she could sleep again. But then I noticed that she was… different. We'd watch a lot of movies together, she always said I had a lot to catch up on, but she stopped doing this as well. She wouldn't come over and she wouldn't invite me anymore, wasn't even talking to me anymore. Yes, Natasha, I too thought she was angry with me, but that's not it. She's become… distanced might be the best word I think, but it's too weak. Not her usual self. She's hardly talking, and she's hardly even looking at me. That's not the Josephine I know," he finished. "Not anymore."

Barton made a vague gesture and looked at Natasha, who was eyeing him critically. "He's got a point there, Nat. It sounds weird enough to me."

"Looks like I've been ignoring a lot of signs," she said after a while.

"I guess we all have," Steve's grip on the cup became stronger again. He needed to take care not to break it.

"And what are we going to do now? Did you tell Nick about it already?" Barton looked from Steve to Natasha and back again.

"Useless," Steve said. "I talked to him about this a few days ago, or at least I tried. He said Hernandez would have found anything unusual about her by now and dismissed me."

"I'd like to pay her a visit," Natasha said and got up.

"Then let's go," Barton suggested and they left the room, leaving two mugs of coffee behind.

"Jo? Open the door, it's us," Natasha called through the closed door of Josephine's apartment. She hadn't answered the bell, and Natasha had spent the last minutes with knocking and calling. "Come on, open up," she shouted and hammered on the door.

"It's useless, Natasha, she won't open," Steve said.

Natasha took a step back from the door and fumbled in her pockets until she drew out a weird-looking metal device. It was only about two inches long and Natasha held it on the door, shoving it up and down, seemingly looking for the right position.

"What are you doing there?" Steve looked from Natasha to the door, to Clint, who just shrugged, and back to Natasha.

"Let's just see if she's at home," Natasha stated simply.

"You're using your spy-gear on your friends?"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, Captain," she said and pressed the device on the door, where it stuck. It blinked rapidly for a few seconds until it started to emanate a greenish glow. "She's not here," Natasha said and pressed the device again. "Let's go in."

"Go in? How do you want to go in without breaking the door?" However, before he had finished, he heard a faint clicking sound and Natasha opened the door and went in. "Come on, boys," she said, and Steve and Clint followed her inside.

It was not what he had been hoping for, but it was the confirmation he needed. Josephine's flat had always been clean, but the flat now looked as if nobody lived there. No books, no magazines… no dishes, nothing pointed to the fact that somebody lived here. Except for the plants – they were shriveled up, the leaves turned brown and the crumpled leftovers lying on the floor.

"I told you," he said and closed the door behind him. "That's not Josephine anymore. She told me that she drowns her plants. But this is neglect…" He sat down on a chair by the kitchen table and looked at his hands, but he didn't really see them. He had been sitting here with Josephine so many times… why hadn't he seen it sooner? Why hadn't he said anything? Was it because he hadn't wanted to see her change? Steve shook his head. Concentrate.

Natasha had left for the bedroom as soon as they had entered the flat. Now she came back, looking alert. She carried slips of paper and came to the table, where she scattered them. "These were in her bedroom," Natasha explained. "Blueprints of several floors of the Triskelion. And of the electric circuits. And her weapon is gone."

Steve said nothing, just browsed through the papers. What was this supposed to mean?

"Weapon?" Barton asked, and his voice had an edge to it.

"Her weapon. Gone," Natasha repeated. "She once told me that she keeps it in the wardrobe, because she doesn't really want to see it. But it's gone."

"Believe me now?" Steve looked from Banner to Natasha, his voice firm and serious and quiet. His hands were balled to fists and he ignored the slight pain, caused by his fingernails cutting into his skin.

"And what are we go-" Barton's mobile rang. "Wait a second," he said and pulled it out of the pocket of his pants.

"We need to stop her before anything… what's wrong, Clint?" Natasha looked worriedly at her partner. Could be something about Jo."

"We should go," he stated and got up from his chair. "Nick's set a silent alarm, look at your mobiles.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked before he pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"See for yourself," Barton said.

Fury's message was displayed directly and consisted only of a few signs. _Code SO-27_. Steve looked at Barton, who looked just like Steve felt, even though he had never heard of a _Code SO-27_. Then he looked at Natasha. She had gone pale.

A/N: Hey guys. I'm really sorry I didn't update for such a long time, but, well. Life, you know?

I'd be really happy to hear from you, whether you're still interested in what will happen and such.

Have a nice weekend!


	24. October 8 - Steve (2)

Natasha's car came to a screeching halt in front of the Triskelion, right next to the mobile coffee stall, whose owner didn't even flinch. She might be used to it, or simply deaf, as Steve had expected her to be for months now.

Natasha didn't even bother to lock the car but went ahead of him and Clint to the entrance of the Triskelion in a fast pace.

"Any news?" Steve looked at Clint, who pulled out his mobile again, took a quick look at the display and shook his head. "And you're sure?"

"It's up to you, Captain," he said simply.

Steve nodded curtly. "I have no idea," he admitted.

They had reached Natasha by now. She had drawn one of her guns and released the safety-catch of it. The automatic entrance doors of the Triskelion didn't open.

"What's going on?" Steve asked, standing in front of the glass doors and wondering whether he should break them with his shield just to get in.

"Nick must have initiated a lockdown. The building's closed to everyone under level 6 – nobody gets in, nobody gets out," Natasha explained and indicated a small display on the concrete wall next to the doors. "One of us got to have their retinas scanned there, or we won't get in," she said. With that, she went to the wall and looked straight into the display. The doors opened and they went inside.

Halfway to the wall with the escalators, they were met by a S.T.R.I.K.E. unit led by Rumlow, dressed in their signature black fighting gear and heavily armed.

"We need to get them out of the way," Natasha whispered to him out of the corner of her mouth when they approached the group.

"Got a problem there, Captain," Rumlow said as a greeting.

"What's the status?" Secretly, he counted them. It was a group of fifteen men.

"Being honest, we have no idea. We've got orders to wait for you down here."

"Who gave the order?"

"Agent Hill."

That was good.

"Where is Agent Hill?" he asked.

"On her way here."

He didn't allow himself to let his relief show and thought about a plan to get the S.T.R.I.K.E. team out of the way. "Is the building evacuated?"

"Everyone up to thirtieth floor and from thirty-seven on has left the building. All the floors between are concerned. The stairs are locked, so we won't get there using them."

There we go, he thought. "Elevators are working?"

"Until the thirtieth floor," Rumlow replied.

"You'll get everyone out from thirty-first to thirty-fifth," he instructed them. "Natasha and I are going up to thirty-six." He looked at Barton. "Hawkeye, you know what I need you to do, right?"

Barton nodded curtly and turned on his heels to leave the building. Natasha looked after him and bit her lip.

The last members of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team had pried open the doors of the elevator shaft and entered the thirty-fifth floor. Steve and Natasha continued to climb the shaft, holding on to the cables, to the upper floor. Steve forced the metal doors open with his bare hands and drew himself up over the threshold to the floor. He helped Natasha and finally, they were both standing on solid ground again.

"Natasha, what's a Code SO-27?"

Natasha said nothing while she bent down and took a second gun from a holster on her ankle. She got up again, released the safety catch and looked at him. "It means that S.H.I.E.L.D. internals are endangered by an outward source," she said evasively.

"What sort of internals?"

"The sort that could mean the death of… many agents," she said after a pause. "Code SO-27 contains all the information on our current and past undercover agents. Their whereabouts, their missions, their aliases… everything."

"But how-"

"No, Steve. Not like this," Natasha said before he could finish his question. "This data isn't easily accessible at all. You need at least two agents to get access to it, and you'll be having a hard time if Nick Fury isn't one of them."

"And you think Josephine would be able to do that?"

"No," Natasha answered. "She wouldn't. But Steve, the person we'll meet isn't going to be the Jo we all came to know in the past year. If what Clint says is true and Jo's really been compromised, there won't be anything left of her. This will be the girl she was made to be by them, not the one we know. She won't recognize us, and she might just as well try to kill us if we're in her way." Natasha looked at him with real concern in her eyes. "You think you can do this?"

He returned her look, but didn't answer just yet. Instead, he took his time pulling his shield from his back putting his right arm through the straps. "I will not try to kill her," he said slowly.

"Did you two ever talk about what happened in June before she went to Central America?"

"Seriously? Natasha, this is not the moment to talk about this."

She shrugged. "Just trying to lighten up the scene," she said as they started to walk down the dark hallway towards Fury's office. "We'll have to get her away from the computers, that's our first priority," she said.

"Natasha, we're not going to kill her," he said. They stopped in front of the door to Fiona's small office. It was too quiet for his liking, and he patted his pockets, searching for the communicator, just like Natasha did. Rumlow had given them each a set, but they weren't going to use those. The S.T.R.I.K.E. team wasn't supposed to hear what was going on. He put the earpiece in, attached the transmitter on his sleeve, and saw Natasha do the same.

"Hawkeye, what's the status?"

In the following seconds of silence, he looked at Natasha. She had her gun drawn, the other one on her belt and listened on the door. They weren't even wearing gear, there had been no time. Only jeans and sweaters. The only thing that was between him and a gun his shield, and Natasha didn't even have that.

"In position. You better get in." Barton's voice pulled him back to the present.

"Don't shoot," he said. "Whatever happens, don't shoot unless I give the order."

He waited for several seconds. "Hawkeye, can you copy that?"

"Captain, I can't guarantee that"

"Hawkeye, you won't shoot her unless I give the order."

Again, it took Barton a few moments to answer. "Copied," he said.

Steve looked at Natasha again and nodded slowly. She replied his gesture by nodding curtly before he opened the door, Natasha aiming her gun at the empty, dark room. Silently, they made their way across the room and stopped at the door to Fury's office. Faint voices could be heard through the wooden door.

"Recognize them?" He whispered tonelessly and looked at Natasha, who squinted at him, listening hard.

"There's Jo," she answered equally silent. "But she sounds… different. And there's someone else, but it's not Nick. Steve, what do you want to do inside there?"

"I figure something out," he whispered, not being too sure himself. He stretched out his arm, his fingers closing over the cold handle, and opened the door.

Josephine stood there, bent over the keyboard on Fury's desk, typing in orders and looking at the holograph in the middle of the room with her face screwed up in exertion. Fury lay on the floor in front of the desk. Steve couldn't make out any injuries, but this didn't mean anything. Next to Josephine stood a dark-haired man in his early fifties, his arms crossed in front of his chest, who looked at him and Natasha with an awful smile on his face.

"Finally," the man said. "Tamila, say _Hello_ to your friends"

Immediately Natasha pointed her gun at the man, closing the door behind them with her foot, but her eyes never leaving his face.

Steve looked at Josephine, whom the man had just called Tamila. Tamila… it was the name those people had given her when they had made her a merciless killer, before they wiped her memories, just to resurrect them if the day came. As it seemed, that day had already come and he hadn't realized it soon enough.

Josephine looked up and he knew straight away that Natasha had been right. This wasn't the Josephine he knew. Her eyes fixated him with nothing but blankness and indifference while her right hand left the keyboard and she gripped the handle of the gun that lay next to it. "Hello, friends," she said, but her voice was all wrong. Not like Josephine. She concentrated again on the holograph.

"Jo, get away from the monitor," Natasha said, her gun still aimed at the man. Josephine didn't even react.

Steve followed Josephine's gaze to the holograph. There were countless lines of numbers and letters, seemingly written in a code. He knew he could not make sense of it, so he didn't even try and looked back at Josephine.

"Josephine, get away from there," he said slowly. Again, she didn't react.

"She does not care about you," the man said. "Tamila has a job to do, and she will not be distracted by you."

"What about Fury? Is he still alive?" From the distance, Steve couldn't quite make out whether Fury was still breathing.

"As of now, he is," the man answered ambiguously.

"Who are you?" Natasha still pointed her gun at him, but Steve saw her other hand moving towards the holster on her hips. "Head of C.R.O.S.S.?"

"A noble organization such as ours does not need a _head_ , Agent Romanoff. Not just one, after all. We are better than this."

"What did you do to her?" Steve didn't look at him, his eyes still fixed on Josephine, who was working the keyboard frantically.

"Me? Nothing. Can you not see that she is in perfect health? She is better than she has been in years, for she finally remembers. She is who she is meant to be," he said, making a grand gesture with his arms.

"That's not who she is, it's what you made her" He tried to make his voice sound calm as he stepped closer to the desk, stopping in the middle of the room when he saw Josephine's hand twitch on the gun. He didn't want to push her too far, not just yet.

"We are but the product of other people's choices. You should know that, _Captain America_ " The man chuckled.

"You forget the difference there," Steve gave back. "I knew what I was doing. I had agreed to it, willingly and knowingly. Not like Josephine. She was just a goddamn child." He had problems keeping his voice steady, thinking about what Josephine had told him about what she remembered. Again, he took a step closer to her. From the corner of his eyes, he saw a silhouette that could only be Barton shift position in the opposite tower of the Triskelion. He shook his head for a fraction, hardly noticeable, sure Barton would see him.

"Josephine, listen to me," he said intently, not taking his eyes off her. "Josephine, you hear me? Get away from that keyboard, now." He didn't shout it, but it was clearly an order and she finally looked at him, her hand cramped on the handle of the gun.

"You cannot command me," she said indifferently.

"True," he said and tried to smile. "But that's not what I want, anyway. Just get away from the keyboard, okay?"

"Steve, what are you doing? You can't _talk_ her out of this" He felt Natasha's gaze on him before she returned it on the man.

"Trust me, just this once, okay?" He said it quietly and hoped that only Natasha and Barton would hear it. He could tell that Natasha didn't like this at all, but also that she wouldn't do anything stupid.

"Josephine, come around, okay? We can deal with this, no harm's done yet."

"Oh, the harm will be done, you need not worry about this," the man interrupted. "But he is right, Tamila, we have plenty of time. Why don't we take care of your friends before we finish our honourable task?"

Josephine nodded and, her right hand still clenched around the handle of the gun, she took a step back.

"Okay, Josephine, this is just about me and you, you hear me? Only the two of us, okay?" He tried to ignore the sound of Barton inhaling sharply in his ear and tried to ignore his pulse running ever faster.

"Tamila, why don't we start with Captain America here?" The man laughed, as if he found this situation highly amusing. Probably, he did.

Josephine took up the gun, aiming it straight at him, her face blank.

"Only the two of us, okay? Josephine, you're not a killer, you know that." But what did he know? Maybe this was the only way. He pulled his arm out of the straps of his shield and laid it down to the floor next to his feet. He could only imagine the disbelieving look on Natasha's face, but there was no time to think of anyone else. "We're in this together, remember?" He took a step closer to her and saw from the corner of his eyes how Natasha grabbed the second gun and aimed at Josephine. "Natasha, don't," he said sharply.

"Just a precaution, Captain," Natasha answered in a strained voice. He hoped that she wouldn't interfere.

"Josephine, remember it, okay? Just you and me, and we'll get you out of this, okay?" He had forgotten how hard it was to stay calm when faced with a gun and you were unable to defend yourself. "I'm not going to leave you alone," he said.

Was there a flicker in her eyes? For a tiny moment, he thought the emptiness was gone. A tiny moment of reminiscence?

"Jo, put the gun away" Natasha's voice sounded harsh in the momentary silence and seemed to linger in the room.

"Natasha, I said no!" he snarled, looking at Josephine whose gun was still pointing at him and taking a step to the right, standing now between Josephine and Natasha and ruining her line of fire.

"Tamila, why don't you bring an end to this sorry theater," the man said and chuckled again.

"Josephine, put the gun away, it's alright, just come around" He could see how her hands started to shake, slowly, but the tremor was growing harder by the second. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here, Josephine."

"Tamila, finish your job. Shoot him!"

"Josephine, remember Nunavut. Don't do this to yourself again. You need to remember."

"Steve, get out of the way," Natasha hissed. He ignored her.

"Tamila, kill him!"

"Jo, put the gun away!"

"Josephine, it's okay. This is just me and you, just the two of us, you hear me?"

Her hands were shaking ever harder and he could see a glint of fear in her eyes. His muscles started to relax.

Then she pulled the trigger.

Once.

Twice.

And another time.


	25. October 8 - Natasha

It all happened in slow motion. Natasha saw how Jo pulled the trigger, again and again, saw the look of delight on the man's face and the look of shock on Steve's as the bullets hit him and he fell to the floor. She saw the look of horror on Jo's face when she realized what she had done.

What she didn't see was the movement of the man's arm right before the window shattered and he screamed out in pain, an arrow sticking from his shoulder.

"Jo, drop the gun," Natasha said as calmly as she could muster. "Drop it. Slowly, on the floor, and kick it away." Natasha was still aiming her guns at Jo and the man, even though the man didn't seem to be a real danger right now, rolling on the floor and whimpering in pain.

"Nat, what about Rogers?" Clint's anxious voice seemed to explode in her head.

"Shut up!" she whispered. "In a second"

She looked at Jo again. Her gun was still pointing to where Steve had been standing only seconds ago, her hands shaking hard, her face full of terror. "Jo, you will put the gun down, now!"

And finally Jo did as she had been told. Slowly, she put the gun on the floor and kicked it away to the other end of the room, all the while shaking hard and staring at Steve, who was lying on the floor, with an expression of utter shock on her face. She looked years younger as her gaze left Steve and caught Natasha's eyes. "Natasha, what have I done?" It was barely more than a whisper.

"Jo, is this you?" She had to make sure, even if it cost her precious seconds.

"I think so," Jo answered, her voice shaking and unsure.

"Prove it"

" I don't know how. We don't know each other that well, Natasha. You never tell anything about yourself."

"True." It was good enough for her, for now. If it hadn't been Jo, she would probably have told her something standing in her file. Well, that part of the file that was accessible. Natasha lowered one of her guns, now only aiming at the man on the ground. "Come around from the table and see what you can do for Nick," Natasha said and crossed the few yards between her and Steve and bent down to him.

"He's breathing," Jo said. "I think I just knocked him out."

"Come over here," Natasha said as she felt for Steve's pulse. It was still there and surprisingly strong.

"Nat, I need a status." It was Clint again.

"Get the medics," she snapped into the communicator. She knew that Clint wanted more information, but there wasn't time.

She felt Jo's presence and looked up at her. She was staring at Steve in shock, her eyes wide open, her hands pressed over her mouth, seemingly unable to make her own decisions.

"I need you down here, Jo." Natasha had dealt with people in shock before and knew that they needed orders most of all. "I need you to put pressure on his wound, okay? Just like you did with Salinger. Can you do that?"

Jo nodded and crouched down beside her, pressing her shaking hands on Steve's bleeding stomach. Steve's shoulder had also been hit, but Natasha wasn't sure whether the bullet was still in there or had gone straight through. Natasha shrugged off her sweater to give it to Jo as a makeshift bandage when she realized that the steady whimpering in the background had stopped. She heard a movement and a clicking sound.

"I would think twice about that."

Natasha whirled around, gun ready, to see Nick, standing upright, pointing a gun at the man on the floor, whose hands had wandered into the pocket of his jacket, probably to draw a gun.

"Tamila," the man groaned. "Kill them, finally."

Natasha looked back at Jo, whose shaking hands didn't leave Steve's body. Her gaze was fixed and her fingers clawed into the bloody tissue of Steve's shirt. She said nothing, but it was evident that she was still Jo.

"It's alright, Natasha, I got him covered," Nick said. "What about Rogers there?"

"He's…"

"Awake. I'm awake…" Steve's voice was hoarse. She looked at him, the eyes in his pale face open but exhausted. "How long was I gone?"

"Only about a minute, maybe two," Natasha said.

Steve straightened up, groaning in pain as he did so, but Jo didn't stop to put pressure on the wound, yet she also wasn't looking at him.

"You should stay down." Natasha realized herself how tensed her voice sounded. "Clint's called the medics already, we should wait for them."

"No, you shouldn't, Natasha," Nick put in. He was standing by the desk by now. With his gun, he still kept the man in check, but his eyes continued to check the monitors on his desk. "The three of you should get out of here ASAP, the first S.T.R.I.K.E. unit's on their way already. Natasha, you know how Rumlow shoots first and asks later, and we don't need this right now." The man on the floor moved again. "And you stay where you are!" Nick bellowed, his finger on the trigger twitching. "Rogers, can you get up and get out?"

"Guess so," Steve answered. His voice sounded strained and the bloodstain on his shirt was getting bigger, just like the bloodstain on his shoulder.

"Hawkeye, we're coming down," Natasha said into her communicator. "Underground parking."

"Got it, Nat. We'll meet you there."

"Then let's get you down." She tried to make her voice sound light and keep the concern she felt when she looked at Steve, and also at Jo, out of it. She crouched down next to him, laid his arm over her shoulder, and slung her other arm around his back. Steve didn't flinch when she flexed his shoulder, making her hope that the damage wasn't lasting. Jo did the same on his other side before they stood up. She felt his weight press upon her, weighing her down, and she didn't like it, as it meant he had to rely on their presence to stand upright while Nick called for his private elevator and they made their way across the room, just as Nick had indicated them to do.

Jo was still pressing her hand on his wounds, bloodied by now, and her gaze locked on the floor.

A soft sound indicated that the elevator had arrived, and a normal-looking piece of wall parted to let them enter. "Get them on the ground floor," Fury said, his gun still pointing at the man on the floor, his eyes never leaving him. They got into the small metal chamber, the doors closing after them.

"Josephine, are you okay?" His voice was tensed and he closed his eyes after he said it, his face a grimace filled with pain.

"This is all my fault," Jo whispered, looking away.

"It's alright," he said quietly. "You're back, and you're a bad enough shot" He chuckled quietly, but stopped right away. Natasha felt how his muscles tensed and bit her lip when Jo told the wall that she was sorry. She looked at the numbers over the door. They were only at the twenty-third floor by now.

"Nat, we're waiting." Again it was Clint's voice that tore her out of her thoughts.

"We're about halfway down," Natasha responded into the communicator. Nervously she was watching the glowing red numbers as they counted down the floors when she felt Steve's body going rigid next to her and she noticed how his breathing became more labored. She looked up at his face, but his eyes were closed and small beads of sweat were on his forehead. He tried to push Jo's hand away from his stomach and to free himself from Natasha's grasp as well.

"Steve, stop it," she said calmly and tightened her grip on him. "You've been shot and lost a lot of blood. Be happy you're still standing, you're going right into shock."

"I don't go into shock, that's crap," he mumbled.

"Please, Steve, please stay calm." Jo was talking in an unusually composed voice, almost distracted, Natasha observed worriedly.

"Steve, we're going to sit you down. I think standing's not your best option at the moment," Natasha said, her eyes still fixed on the red numbers. There were still ten more floors to go.

They lowered him on the floor, leaning him on the metal wall, where he closed his eyes again, breathing heavily, his hand clenched over his stomach with his fingers gripping his bloodied shirt. Natasha laid her hand on Steve's trembling shoulder as she got up again, not too sure whether he felt her touch.

"Jo, what about you?" Natasha looked at Jo, who was still crouching next to Steve, her eyes full of fear.

"What about me?"

"Are you in control?" She had been afraid of this since Jo came to herself in Nick's office and her hand found the way to the gun on her hips.

Jo got up, standing right opposite her and looking her straight in the face with an expression of blankness that quickly made way to one of shock. "I don't know," she breathed. "I don't know. Yes… no. No, I don't… I'm not in… control."

Natasha closed her eyes for the fraction of a second. So she hadn't been wrong. "You know what I have to do now, Jo?"

Jo nodded. She looked like a young girl when she closed her eyes.

When the elevator doors finally opened, Natasha was the only one to remain standing.

A/N: Dear Guest, thanks for the review, even though I have to admit that I didn't quite get it. Is this some sort of reference that I don't know about?

Anyway, guy's, I'd really be happy if you'd leave a comment. I have no idea whether it makes any sense at all to keep posting when seemingly nobody is interested :(


	26. October 9

She woke up with a splitting pain in her head and the sound of screaming in her ears. Jo opened her eyes, staring fixedly at the dark and sparse ceiling, feeling the hard mattress under and the thin blanket over her body. The screams became louder and louder, her head seemed to burst with it, and she wanted to scream back, wanted it to stop, but she couldn't. She tried to sit up, but her hands didn't move and, looking down upon herself, she realized that her hands were cuffed to the bed frame.

She inhaled sharply as images appeared before her inner eye, of people lying on the ground, unconscious or dead, she didn't know, pictures of a strange man, a cruel laugh and the feeling of fear.

Blood, everywhere.

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and pinned her on the bed. She could feel a hand on her face, calloused fingertips gently stroking her cheek. And she heard a voice, familiar, yet strange at the same time. A silhouette appeared before her.

"Jo, snap out of it, you hear me? You're safe here!"

She blinked, shaking her head. The screaming stopped and the silhouette slowly turned to Clint.

"Focus, Jo," he said insistently. "Focus."

Once again, she shook her head, took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her breathing became more regular. "What happened?"

He gave her a wry smile. "I'm going to open the handcuffs, but lie still, alright?" He vanished for a short moment and she could feel her arms come free. "They cut in quite deep, but it's no miracle, you've been thrashing around pretty hard."

"What are you doing here, Clint?" She sat up and rubbed her hurting wrists.

He looked at her for a few long seconds before he answered. "I couldn't bear your screams any longer," he said then.

She shook her head in confusion. "But I didn't scream," she said bewilderedly.

Clint chuckled, but there was no humor in it. "Oh yes, you did," he replied. "It's been a long time since I heard someone scream like this."

Jo swallowed hard. "What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

The question caught her off guard. "I don't know," she said, surprised by her own words.

"What's the last thing you remember for sure?"

"I don't know," she said again. "I think I… it… I think I got into a cab, but I don't know for sure."

"Nothing else?" He didn't smile but just looked at her with a certain sad determination she couldn't quite collate.

Jo closed her eyes again. "There's pictures, and sounds," she said then. "Of a man, I don't know him, but I know that I should be afraid of him. He's making me do… things. Stuff I don't want to do, but I'll do it anyway, because I know that something bad would happen if I didn't. And there's so many people, and… I don't know what happened to them."

"That's all you remember?"

"I'm not sure I even remember this, it's like a bad dream. Steve and Natasha were in it… and it didn't end well" She shivered.

"Jo, this wasn't a dream."

Had he hit her in the face, the moment of shock couldn't have been bigger.

"Focus, Jo," Clint said urgently. "Focus and stay calm."

"What did I do?" It wasn't even a real question. And actually, she didn't really want an answer. She had a feeling she knew it already, but she needed to make sure. Staring at the wall she listened to Clint telling her how they thought she must have been _activated_ , as he called it, some weeks ago, and how they hadn't realized it until it was almost too late.

"What did I do?" she repeated, more urgently this time.

"There was a man, the one you just told me about," Clint started. "You and him entered the Triskelion yesterday afternoon and made your way up to Nick's office. He initiated a silent alarm and locked the upper floors. He evacuated Fiona and some others via his private elevator before you arrived in his office"

"What was I doing there?"

"Nick initiated a Code SO-27. This means that all the data of our undercover agents was going to be revealed to the public eye. Their missions, their whereabouts, their aliases, everything"

She swallowed hard. "You're talking conjunctive," Jo observed. She didn't allow herself that tiny bit of hope, or at least she tried not to.

"Indeed," Clint admitted. "You didn't get very far, and those few you could reveal were alarmed by a signal Nick initiated at the same time he was giving you access to the data, right before you knocked him out. The guys from coordination are still trying to contact some of the agents you blew, but they're quite sure they made it out in time." He paused.

"There's something else." Again, it wasn't a question.

"Do you remember any of the events I'm telling you about?" He looked down on her observantly.

"Not really," she replied. "Maybe fragments, I don't know." She shook her head. "Clint, what aren't you telling me?"

"What do you remember about Steve and Natasha?"

"No!" She almost screamed it. "No, no, no, no, no, tell me I didn't do this," she whispered manically, drawing up her legs and slinging her arms around them, still staring at the wall. She tried to concentrate, to focus on her breathing, but she was failing miserably.

"Jo, it's alright," Clint said soothingly. "Everything's fine."

"Alright?" Finally, she looked at him, her eyes wide open, horrified. "I killed him." Black fog seemed to creep over her.

"No, you didn't," he replied and placed his hands on her shoulders to keep her steady. "You shot him, yes, but he's okay-"

"Nothing's okay, I tried to kill him! Why are you even talking to me? Clint, I tried to kill him. I thought there had been a bit of me left, but I would never do this, Clint, I wouldn't, I swear, they did something to me I can't control, you need to get away from me, please!" She was talking so fast, she wasn't even sure the words that left her were distinguishable or made any sense at all, she only knew that this couldn't happen again.

"Jo, it's okay," he said again, gripping her shoulders harder and forcing her to sit still. "It won't happen again, Nat took care of it." He tried to look her in the face, but she avoided his gaze and looked at her legs under the blanket.

"How?" She didn't believe him, but she wanted to know why he was so sure.

"Cognitive recalibration, as she calls it."

Jo did look up now, staring blankly at Clint.

"She's hit you really hard on the head, got you some stitches on the way. It works, she did the same with me almost two years ago," he elaborated. "Got a god out of my head that way, and believe me, I did worse."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah, I did worse," he said bitterly.

"No, that's not what I mean. Are you sure they are… gone? She's not coming back?"

He relaxed his grip on her. "Mostly, yes. We're going to keep a close eye on you for the next while, but Nat knows her job. Especially when it comes to something like this."

She nodded slowly. Maybe, just maybe he was right. Maybe... she… wasn't coming back. Maybe it was going to be alright.

No. Not everything.

"Want to go and say hello to the Captain?" Clint's voice tore her out of her thoughts.

"What do you mean?" Jo looked right at him, seeing the concern in his face and relaxed, just a little.

"He's just down the corridor and should be awake by now." Clint shrugged nonchalantly, seemingly trying to make her feel better.

"I don't think he wants to see me," she answered bitterly, looking away again.

"Come on, Josie, don't be stupid"

He was calling her Josie again. He only ever did this when he was really worried about her.

"It's not stupid," she said. "I wouldn't want to see someone who's tried to kill me"

Clint chuckled and it seemed like he really was amused this time. "Got a point there," he admitted. "But the Captain's not like this. Guess he was more worried about you than about himself all the time"

Jo sighed. She had to see him sooner or later anyway. Tell him she was sorry for what happened, even though she didn't really remember it. "Okay," she said. "Let's get going"

She stopped dead in front of the door, her hand frozen in midair. Voices were coming from the room, muffled, but they sounded… normal.

"I can't go in there." She turned around to Clint, who was standing right behind her.

"Of course you can," he said and reached for the handle.

"No, don't!"

But he had already opened the door and had pushed her into the room.

Steve was there, in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown. From under his right sleeve some white bandages popped through. An IV needle was sticking out of his right forearm, but he sat upright, leaning only casually on the back of the bed. Natasha sat on a chair next to the bed, leaning back on it as well. They were chatting animatedly and only stopped when Clint banged the door closed behind himself.

Steve and Natasha looked up at them, a slight smile creeping on Natasha's features.

Steve stared at her for several seconds. "Josephine," he said then. His voice was quiet.

He was alive. She wanted to run to his bed, to hold him, to tell him how sorry she was, wanted to hear his heartbeat with her ear pressed on his chest, to do anything at all, but her legs wouldn't move and she just stood there, staring at him, when Clint gently shoved her further inside the room until she was standing next to Steve's bed, right opposite Natasha, her hands gripping the bed frame until the knuckles turned white.

"You're alive," she whispered, barely audible.

He smirked. "What was this about Captain Obvious again?"

She couldn't help but smile in return, but only for a second or two. "I'm sorry," she said. "For… everything I did to you."

"It's not your fault," Natasha said. "It wasn't you who did these things; none of what happened is your fault. Clint and I did worse. A lot worse."

"Yeah, whatever," Steve put in and grinned.

"They overdosed the painkillers on him, I wouldn't take him too seriously," Natasha said when she saw the look on Jo's face.

"Are you… are you going to be okay again?"

"Give me a few days in a bed and I'll be good as new," he giggled. He really giggled – how much painkiller had they given to him? But even so, she saw him cringe when he shifted position.

"How bad is it?"

"Not too bad," Natasha said, while Steve was still laughing quietly. "You missed pretty much everything that matters, except for the circuits in Nick's wall, but they can be repaired, really." She smiled at her encouragingly, and Jo had a feeling that it was real.

Slowly, she nodded. She still felt bad and for a while, nobody said a word, and only Steve's occasional laughter broke the silence.

"Yeah, boys and girls, Nat and I are gonna go, grab a cup of coffee. You want some?" Clint broke the silence. Of course it was him.

She shook her head as Clint and Natasha stood up, horrified by the very idea of being alone with Steve, but he said that he'd love a cup of decent coffee and broke down again, giggling. They left the room. She looked after them even when the door was already closed.

"Josephine, what about you?"

She looked back at him. He had stopped laughing and seemed earnest again. "What do you mean?"

"You're okay again? You're back?"

"I think I am," she answered slowly. "Clint said I was, after all. Are you in pain?"

"Just a little," he said dismissively and grinned. "No need to be worried, I'll be fine."

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"Got that," he grinned. "And again, it's alright. Nobody blames you. Well, Fury does, because the third bullet you fired hit the wall and destroyed an electric circuit, or whatever. I think Natasha just told you, I wasn't listening. He said you're shooting had never been worse." He chuckled and did his best not to cringe as he did so. "Thank god you're such a lousy shot. Or maybe you're just that good – missing that much is an art in itself."

For some moments, he was, once again, consumed by his own laughter. Then he laid his hand on hers and gently started to ease her fingers from the frame. "You look bad," he said then. It confused her, his switching from serious to giggly and back again within a few seconds. "But you don't remember the past few weeks, do you?"

She just shook her head and watched the clear liquid in the plastic bag drop down steadily into the IV tube while she felt his warm hands upon her fingers when suddenly she saw him fall to the floor, saw Natasha's shocked face, heard the cruel laugh of a stranger. She jerked her hand away from him, staring wide eyed at Steve and stumbled backwards.

"Josephine, what's wrong?" He seemed alert, but his voice sounded muffled in her ears, as if she was under water.

She stopped, her hands in fists, her fingernails almost protruding her skin, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, relieved to see nothing but black. "I've seen it again," she whispered. "What if it never goes away?"

A/N: Thank you very, very much for the nice reviews! I know it's been too long, but I really do hope you enjoy it. Please let me know, I'd really be happy to find out!

CJ/OddBall: Aww, thank you so much! I really, really appreciate it! And it means so much to me that your heart is breaking for Jo! I'm cruel, I know.

Guest1234: Your review was, I guess, pretty much what I needed to start posting again. It's not as if the first and second part of the story isn't long since finished, it's just that my real life seems to be consuming me :(


	27. October 13

The display on the wall started to blink and gave away a shrill signal. Jo startled, having stared out at the grey sky, at the grey and dismal panorama D.C. offered her today. It fit her mood so perfectly it was eerie.

Quickly she pressed her hand on the display to have her palm scanned. The doors of the elevator opened silently and she stepped out on to the empty hallway, walking down the way to Fury's office in a steady pace and trying to ignore the goose bumps that started to appear on her forearms. She had no recollection of the last time she'd been walking down this hall.

She knocked on Fiona's door, opening it upon a muffled _Come in_. She entered the small and dark office and saw Fiona smile at her warmly from behind her desk, which was leaden with papers and files.

"You're probably the only person working here to knock on my door," the elderly woman said.

Jo smiled insecurely instead of giving an answer, not sure whether this was meant to tease her or as a compliment, or as something completely different. It was just basic manners, after all, knocking on somebody's door. "Well," she said then. "I didn't know whether you were busy."

"I'm always busy, but nobody else seems to mind" Fiona said, putting her spectacles back on. "How about you? Back to normal again, I take it?"

Jo simply nodded, not really wanting to talk about everything that had happened. "Is Fury here? He left me a message, saying he wanted to talk to me…"

"Yes, dear, in his office," she replied and put on her glasses.

Jo nodded again and walked the few yards to the other door, knocking again and waiting for a reply.

"We're all glad that you're back. I just thought you should know," Fiona said when Fury called out that he was in.

"You said you wanted to see me?" She closed the door behind herself and looked around her in the all-to-familiar office. The wall at the far end was torn open, the rubble lying on the floor and cables sticking out. She bit her lip and looked away to where Fury sat, as usual behind his giant desk.

"Agent Marlow," he said and nodded a greeting, but didn't stand up. "Come in."

She went to his desk and carefully avoided to look at the place where she had shot Steve, afraid there might still be bloodstains on the ground.

"What is it?" She asked when she stood in front of his desk. "You want to tell me you're going to cut my salary to pay for the repair of the wall?"

Fury chuckled. "Sit down, Agent Marlow, why don't you?"

Reluctantly, she did as she was told and sat down on one of the leather chairs. She put her hands in her lap, the fingers of her right hand fumbling on the seam of her sleeve, but she didn't really comprehend that she was doing it at all. She didn't say a word, just looked at Fury expectantly, dreading what he might be telling her, but he didn't say a word. Finally, she couldn't bear the silence any longer. "Did you contact all of them by now?" she blurted out. Of course, she was talking to the undercover agents whose covers she had tried to blow.

But Fury knew that, of course. "All except for one," he said. "But he's stationed very remote and might not have had a chance to communicate until now. Is there anything you think I should know, Agent Marlow?"

The question caught her by surprise. "What do you mean by that?" She didn't even realize that her hands became still. What did he want to hear? She had a million things in mind. "Are you talking about flashbacks?"

"Are you?"

She felt like this wasn't Nick Fury opposite her, but rather Vincente Hernandez, who simply loved to answer her questions with some of his own. "I am," she said after a while, having decided that it would be easier if she just got this over with. "I have them, ever since Mexico. I don't know whether I had them during the time they brainwashed me back into being this… other person, but I have them again since Agent Romanoff got her out of my head." She broke off, looked at Fury, but he just returned her gaze, his head slightly cocked to the side. "I'm not going to lie to you, Fury, I don't know whether she's coming back or she's out of my head for good." Jo sighed and thought about what to say next. "Why did you cover for me? And why don't you just lock me away, somewhere really far off?" She was surprised by her own voice. It wasn't shaky, or resentful or bitter, just matter-of-factly, plainly stating her feelings, or rather the lack of them.

"She's not going to come back unless you'll get into their hands again, Agent Marlow," Fury assured her. It wasn't like Fury to show kindness.

"Why am I not punished for what I did?"

"We only punish those that can be held responsible," Fury pointed out. "This parameter doesn't fit your case."

"Then why am I still here?"

"Joining S.H.I.E.L.D. is a one-way-ticket without return, Agent Marlow."

"And what do you mean by that? I'm still of use? Let's be honest, when you found out who I was, my sheer presence was just too good an offer, wasn't it? One you couldn't just possibly refuse. And there you go, miscalculated after all. No secrets, no nothing. You didn't destroy a not just potentially dangerous organization, you don't have a human weapon in me, just a normal human being with too many weaknesses wanting nothing more than to go back to normal. I know that this isn't possible, I know I have… obligations toward S.H.I.E.L.D., and don't think I'm not thankful for what you did for me. Because I am. I'm just saying you're expectations turned out wrong. That I disappointed you."

Fury said nothing for a few very long seconds. Then he placed his hands on the desk. "You're wrong. I never miscalculate, Agent Marlow. Your sheer presence is still an offer nobody in my position would refuse, because your sheer presence means that creatures like Dolojew are coming out of their holes to get you back. He's still being interrogated, but he'll give us what we want in the end. They always do. You might be dangerous, but you can still be controlled, Agent Marlow. I knew you've been activated before you stormed my office because Captain Rogers told me you were acting strange, and I do take these hints seriously, so no, Agent Marlow, I didn't miscalculate. I calculated very well with you. S.H.I.E.L.D. has its eyes and ears everywhere, and we're not turning blind and deaf when it comes to our own. So no: You won't be fired, and you won't be locked up. I want you to go and see Hernandez twice a week until he says you're done. And I want you to come back to work from next week on," he concluded.

She nodded, taken aback. "Why?"

"I play my cards on more levels than you can imagine, Agent Marlow," he said ominously. "Is there anything else?"

Jo swallowed hard. "What did Dolojew tell you until now?"

She pulled her hood off when she entered the front doors of the apartment complex. It had started to rain on her way home and her clothes were dripping wet. She climbed the stairs, her eyes planted firmly on the ground, her head so full of thoughts that even her hands were shaking. Upon climbing the last set of stairs, she took a quick look at the window, which only showed her the dirty wall of the neighboring house, wet with the rain, before she made her way down the hallway to her apartment. She was so lost in thought that she didn't see him and only realized that she wasn't alone when she crashed into Steve.

"Hey, Josephine," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice, even though she didn't see it, since she was carefully avoiding to meet his gaze.

"Hey," she said, gripping her right forearm involuntarily. "What… are you doing here?"

"I'll get some Chinese Take-Away," he said and she finally looked at him. It had only been a few days, but he really did look good as new.

Thank god.

"You want some, too? I could get some for you as well and you'll come over after I'm back?"

She tried to smile, still gripping her forearm, but she failed miserably. "No," she said then. "Thanks, but I'd rather…" She didn't finish the sentence. "I should take a shower, I'm drenched with rain," she said and took out her ID-card. "Maybe another time"


End file.
